


Seize and Desist

by Naomida



Series: The Hauptman Verse [1]
Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Attempted Murder, Gen, Werewolf Mates, Witches, wrote this in one sitting because I have absolutely no chill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:07:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26240857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naomida/pseuds/Naomida
Summary: Obviously Beve had enough trouble in her life with her neighbors the werewolves leaving dead animals on her front porch as threats, she didn't need someone actually going after her to kill her -- especially if it meant the stupid werewolves would get involved too.Too bad no one else got the memo.
Relationships: Beve Perenolde/Varian Wrynn
Series: The Hauptman Verse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1923574
Comments: 4
Kudos: 2





	Seize and Desist

There was a dead squirrel on her porch.

For a second, Beve simply blinked down at it, not sure if it was a hallucination or not. Then the smell of death and decay hit her, and she grimaced with disgust as she stepped over the poor thing and finally stepped in. She finished off her coffee as she crossed the space separating her from the kitchen corner of the giant room that composed her entire house, and threw the empty cup in the same movement as she opened her fridge and peaked inside.

There was a tupperware full of some sort of rice and chicken dish Varian had brought the week before – the tupperware was as big as her head and she had been eating that dish for the whole week now, at _every_ meal.

She wasn’t in the mood for it.

In fact, after the night she had spent, she was in the mood for nothing. She had lost a patient that night. She had bled out on the table while her sister had held her hand and cried, and it had taken Beve thirty minutes to wash off the scent of blood from her hands.

Thinking about it, she closed her eyes and took a second to just breathe very slowly and imagine herself standing all alone on top of a snowy mountain. Small breaths. Calm.

She only started moving once her hands had stopped shaking, stalking with determination to her bathroom, ready to take a shower even though she had taken one at the hospital right before leaving, and then sleep until midday. It was currently way past three in the morning, and she had drank a coffee more for comfort than to stay awake on her drive home, and as she stood under the hot water of her shower, every single one of the muscles in her back tense to the point of hurting, she hoped that the caffeine wouldn’t keep her from falling asleep.

And if it did, well, she had the dead squirrel to take care of.

  
  


  
  


***

  
  


  
  


She woke up with a start at nine in the morning, and just laid there for a while, a strange feeling that she couldn’t name nagging at her. She felt a little better than the night before, but not by much, and as she slowly sat up in bed, she suddenly started thinking about that dead squirrel again.

None of the cats in the neighborhood had ever done it before, and it seemed unlikely that they would start now. She had enemies, but no one who could have tracked her all the way here, and certainly no one who would use something as harmless as a squirrel to deliver the obvious message here.

A dead thing either meant _stay away or you’re next_ , or simply _you’re next_.

There were a lot of things that could want her dead lurking around, but none that she had recently done anything to, starting with the werewolf pack leaving right around the corner.

For some reason, they were the first culprits she could think of, and once she considered the idea she couldn’t let it go.

Still, it was only once she was showered and dressed and standing in front of the dead squirrel again that she decided to take her phone out of her pocket and text Darbel, the local witch – not that Beve would ever be caught dead calling her that to her face, but it was still a funny thought.

“Wassup?” asked Darbel’s unusually chirpy voice.

“Is this a bad time?”

There was a long, drawn out, rough sound in the background before something that sounded exactly like a cell door closed, and Darbel answer, “Not at all Beve. What can I do for you?”

Beve smirked. Darbel was dangerous, and she liked that.

“Someone left a dead squirrel on my door, do you know what it could mean?”

“Mmmh, an offering? Or maybe a warning. Who did you piss off recently?”

“No one that I know of.”

“The werewolves maybe?” she asked, a huge smile obvious in her voice, and an alarm at the back of Beve’s mind suddenly started blaring.

“You know something and you didn’t tell me?”

“Where would be the fun in that?” replied Darbel, and Beve had to admit that she wasn’t angry at all – when she was pretty sure she should have been. Instead she was standing there, looking down at the dead animal with a slight smirk, feeling the rush of a hunt slowly but surely wash over her.

“Any clue?”

“I think it will be more fun if you find out by yourself,” replied Darbel.

Beve agreed, so she ended the call instead of adding anything else.

She still stood there for a while more, listening to the sound of the breeze, closing her eyes for a second, waiting to hear or feel something, anything, but her senses were as dull as ever, and she couldn’t help the disappointed sigh that escaped her as she closed her door, stepped over the squirrel, and joined her car to go to work.

  
  


  
  


***

  
  


  
  


Varian Wrynn was the Alpha of the local werewolf pack. He wasn’t a nice man, or even a pleasant or polite one. He was, however, Beve’s next-door neighbor, and a pain in the ass.

For example, he was waiting with his arms crossed when she got back home that night – and seriously, it was ten at night, way past the time for visits.

They had met a long time ago, about six years actually, back when Beve had just arrived in town. She had been broke, with nothing but the clothes on her back and a couple thousand gold, and this abandoned lot with its shitty tiny house had been the only thing she could have afford – and even then, Darbel had pulled some strings to get her this place. Unfortunately, none of the women had known at the time that the local Alpha had his eyes set on this lot, adjacent to his. If he had managed to buy it before Beve, he would have had what was probably the biggest garden in the city. As it was, his gigantic mansion on a hill overlooked his perfectly kept garden, along with the tall weeds growing chaotically around Beve’s unkept house that had been needing a new coat of paint at least fifteen years ago.

She didn’t mind living in what looked like a shit hole from the outside, and the fact that it drove him crazy only made it better.

She took her time getting out of her car and joining him, pretending she couldn’t see his raised eyebrows and disgusted look as his eyes went to her brand new car for a second – she had found it by chance, and had been needing a car for too long to turn her nose up at it. It was barely safe to drive around in it, and it looked like shit, but at least now she didn’t have to take the bus.

Varian’s eyes slid back to her as she arrived next to him, and she held his gaze without problem. In fact, she had to force herself not to smirk as she felt the anger build in him. He was an Alpha, after all, no one should be able to hold his gaze unless they were more dominant than him, and had it been any other werewolf, Beve knew that they wouldn’t have been able to control their urge and would have forced her to look down, one way or another, but for some reason Varian never did.

He knew that she knew about him – made it no secret that him and the dozens and dozens of shredded men always hanging at his place were a pack of werewolf – and for the first few months that she had lived here she had feared that he had known about her.

Then one night, as she had told Darbel about it, the witch had laughed in her face and told her that Varian thought she was a witch too – and that Darbel did nothing to make him think the contrary.

It was far from the truth, but it was better than having a werewolf of all people up in her business, so she let him believe what he wanted, as long as he did it far from her.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” she asked, still looking right into his eyes.

“Take a wild guess,” he said, his voice the rough gruff she was used to.

She had heard him talk to some of his wolves once. She had been in her garden, with the wind taking her scent away from him, and the man addressing his pack had been a world’s away from the man standing in front of her at this very moment. She knew it wasn’t because he hated witches – he simply hated her.

Too bad for him, it was mutual.

“I don’t have time for your bullshit Wrynn,” she said, brushing past him to get to her door, but, unexpectedly, he grabbed her arm, just above the elbow, and it took everything she had to turn around slowly and not go for his face with claws she didn’t have.

“Make time,” he said, voice dangerously low.

She elbowed him away – infinitely grateful that he let her go when he could have kept her in his hold if he had really wanted to – and did her best to keep her composure.

“Don’t you dare touch me again,” she still had to grit through her teeth, that she flashed at him, knowing that it wouldn’t make him back off but that he would recognize the gesture, “and next time your stupid puppies want to leave a warning in front of my door, I’m turning everyone in your fucking house into toads.”

And before he could answer – in fact, before he could even get his flabbergasted expression in check – she had already walked back inside her home, and slammed the door shut behind her.

He could have broken the door – hell, could have broken the wall, and then her neck, if he had really wanted to – but instead he just stood there on her small and slightly crooked porch for a minute, before leaving without another world, disappearing behind the tall weeds in the direction of his looming mansion.

“Fucking animals,” whispered Beve through her teeth, before locking the front door and going for her fridge.

After all, she was starving.

  
  


  
  


***

  
  


  
  


Beve was spitting up blood. She was laying on the cold snow, looking up at the light gray sky, every rasping breath more difficult than the last. She was dying. Any other day of her very long life, her wounds wouldn’t have been any problems, she would have healed in a matter of minute, and her people would have taken care of her.

Too bad it was her people who had done it to her.

Too bad she was nothing more than a human now.

The snow under her was melting, replaced by a pool of dark red blood, thick and hot. Its loss would kill her if the collapsing lung didn’t, and she closed her eyes against the tears spilling down her cheeks. She had done what needed to be done, and she had been cast out and sentenced to death for it. She had known that it would more than probably happen, but that didn’t make it any better.

As a former immortal being, she had never worried about death before, and now its cold fingers wrapping around her were the scariest thing she had ever felt.

The wind picked up, and she opened her eyes when she felt a soft snowflake fall on the tip of her nose.

 _I don’t abandon my children_ , whispered the Mountain, and Beve tried to gather her magic around her in answer to that, but she couldn’t.

She had been cast out, she couldn’t go back home, and all she could do was wait for her end as a fragile and broken human.

 _My child_ , said the wind. _Mine._

Beve smiled as she closed her eyes again.

She woke up with a start for the second morning in a row, drenched in sweat and having difficulties to breathe, and she had to push her t-shirt up just to see, to make sure, to check, to know.

She was still alive.

The scar was ugly, and still red, even after ten years.  Some days it hurt. Some days, she could still feel the pulse of the magical dagger being pushed between her ribs and slashing though her organs like she was made of powdery snow.

She laid back down, blinking at the unshed tears in her eyes and trying to breathe normally again, knowing that the shaking in all of her body wouldn’t stop before then.

It had been a while, since she had last dreamed of that fateful day. She still remembered with clarity waiting for death to close its cold fingers around her, and feeling something warm touch her face instead.

Darbel had looked like she always did, then. She had been kneeling down next to Beve in the snow, the hood of her cloak off, letting the snow stick to her elegantly curled brown hair. “No worries,” she had whispered, brushing her fingers against Beve’s cheek one more time, “I’m not about to let someone as important and precious as you die like this.”

The details were fuzzy and painful, so Beve didn’t usually try to remember them. All she knew was that the next time she had been conscious enough, she had been laying down on something hard and metal, the loud sound of blades slicing through the air covering any other noise, and there had been wind on her face.

Darbel had been the one to explain to her what a helicopter was, a lot later, once she had been on a bed, drinking a healing potion inside the witch’s lair, wishing that she had died instead.

Coming to the realization she had really lost  _everything_ hadn’t been easy.  She had left Darbel the second she had felt a little better, and had wandered around for about three years, until she had been tired and had tracked down the witch to a new city.

To the lot right next to the local Alpha.

She didn’t know how, but as Beve forced herself up and out of bed, she already knew that a new dead animal was waiting for her at her door.  It would have been a really sick game to play on a poor woman living alone near so many big bad wolf-monster-men, and all outsider looking in should have seen that and thought this exact thought – but unfortunately for whoever was putting those bodies down here, Beve was the biggest predator around, whether she had lost everything that had made her so or not.

After all, she might have lost her powers, but she was still really,  _really_ old. And experience was a good damn teacher.

  
  


  
  


***

  
  


  
  


She bought rat poison. It was her day off work, and she didn’t have any better idea – wouldn’t come up with one until she had visited Darbel and taken a long look at her kitchen cabinets and all the horrifying things they were hiding.

She was sure the poison would work for now, and she was pleased to find the mansion completely dark and silent when she walked there from her own home. Perfect. She started on her retaliation, tracing a gigantic circle around the house with the poison. She was sure they would understand the message, and hopefully back off.

And if they didn’t, well she guessed she’d have to fight for real, and that prospect actually bought a lot of joy.

She went back home and cleaned the now two dead squirrels on her porch, before sitting on her couch with her laptop and going through her usually research about her home and strange sightings in the mountains. It wasn’t useful and she never found anything interesting, but it made her feel better to know that what she had done ten years ago was still active now and was keeping some of the most dangerous creatures she knew about firmly imprisoned somewhere they wouldn’t hurt anyone.

She must have fallen asleep at some point, because she woke up on her couch to the sound of someone pounding on her front door.

With a groan she rolled to her feet, took a second to watch out the window – the sun was setting, which meant she had slept the day away – and went to open the door.

Varian was standing there, unsurprisingly.

His eyes were also a very, very light shade of gray. Too light, compared to their usual gray-blue. The wolf was near the surface then.

 _Great_ , she thought, already feeling grumpy.

“What do you want?” she snapped, frowning and crossing her arms.

She was thirsty and a little bit hungry, and she was sure that by the time this little conversation with her neighbor would be finished she’d have a headache too, and she had an early shift the next day, so she needed to eat and go back to sleep as soon as she could.

“What the fuck is that all around my home?” he asked, and it was enough to have Beve relax a little and get amused.

Hearing him swear meant that he was at his wit’s end, which was always her goal when dealing with him.

“Poison, to get rid of the rats,” she replied, leaning against her doorway and looking up at him though her eyelashes, “you know, since I see them running around your place all the time, I thought I would help you out. As a good neighbor.”

“Listen here,” he groaned, taking a dangerous step up to her, and before she could delight in seeing him so angry, there was an electric arc of magic that cut right through her, down her middle, and she fell heavily, only ending up on her knees thanks to Varian grabbing her arm.

She started shaking, cold sweat appearing on her back as she struggled to breathe. There was something pressing down on her chest, right under her breastbone, and she managed to stop a sob from getting out, transforming it into a shaky exhale instead.

Something was very wrong with her.

“What’s going on?” asked Varian, grabbing her chin and forcing her to look at him.

Beve blinked at the tears in her eyes instead of answering him, and started screaming the moment she felt the second arc of magic, this time pulsating into the scar at her side.

She collapsed into Varian’s arms, and started convulsing.

“Fuck,” she heard him mutter, before she was being moved, not that she could see anything with her eyes rolled back, but she felt his arm go under her legs as he held her up, and then he was walking.

She stopped paying attention for a while after that.

When she came to, she was laying on her couch again, something that smelled extremely bad under her cheek as people muttered in soft voices right outside her door, on the porch.

Groaning, she barely managed to roll to her side before she was dry heaving, the movement making her entire body hurt from soreness and feeling like she had been stabbed once again.

It smelled like magic, she realized. _She_ smelled like magic. A spell had been chucked at her, a powerful one, and that thought was enough to have her run to her bathroom to take a look at her mirror.

She realized she hadn’t turn on the light just as she was meeting her reflection’s eyes. It was the middle of the night, everything was dark, but she could still see as well as if it had been daylight.

“No…” she whispered, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath in through her nose.

It smelled like peppermint and leather and a discreet male perfume, but also her body wash and shampoo, and her detergent. She brought her sleeve to her nose, took another breath.

Yeah, Varian had carried her, she remembered. That was his scent.

Letting her arm fall back at her side, she took another deep breath, recognizing the bad smell she had first smelled on the couch as the terrible axe body spray Varian’s second always wore – this one was bad enough that even a human could smell it from ten meters away.

 _There is no way_ , she thought, heart starting to beat faster.

She focused, and could hear the words Varian and his second Mathias were exchanging on the porch, something about surveillance and getting more people around the lake. She didn’t know what they were talking about, but the fact that she could hear them was overwhelming enough that she had to grab the side of the sink and just spent a moment looking at her pale reflection in the mirror.

It was back. Her senses were back.

She gave a teary smile to the Beve in the mirror, and nodded.

Ten years, and she was finally feeling like herself again.

She took another deep breath, just to be sure, and all of it reached her: the two werewolves on her porch, the pasta she had over-cooked the night before, the two stray cats cuddling under the night sky, the stench of dead squirrels still hanging in the air, and the faint and airy smell of her own magic around her.

She had to sit down on the floor for a minute, overwhelmed.

Her dear neighbor found her in this position when he stepped into the bathroom, and contrary to what she had expected, he simply knelt beside her without saying a word, looking at her face with an indecipherable expression.

She looked right back, something stirring deep inside of her – something she hadn’t felt in a decade, something that had been a part of her for so long, it had felt like losing a limb when it had went away.

And now, it was finally back.

She couldn’t help a smile and had to bite down on her lip to keep it from showing.

“I called Darbel but she didn’t want to come and assured me that whatever happened was normal.”

Beve shrugged a shoulder. Darbel was… well, she couldn’t predict the future, but there were some things that she knew – which was why she had been on that mountain top the day Beve had been thrown there too, which had saved here life – and she knew not to ask questions. Everything had its own reasons, and if Darbel knew something that she didn’t want to tell, then Beve was going to respect it.

“She also told me you would be feeling bad for a while.”

Which was why he was still here. It was  _almost_ nice, but Beve knew that it was mostly the Alpha instinct and had nothing to do with him who would have preferred to let her bang her head on her front door while she convulsed for who knew how long. Still, she gave him a nod, because she wasn’t about to thank him verbally, and he nodded right back, before getting up on his feet.

“Right. Don’t get on my property again, or I’ll send that rat poison right back, and you won’t like what I’ll do with it.”

She snorted and watched him walk out.

“I’ll shove it right back at you,” she said just as he was closing the front door behind him, and she knew that he heard her even if she hadn’t been able to hear him pause, just for a heartbeat.

He muttered something under his breath too softly for her to hear as he walked away, through her mess of a garden, and she rolled her eyes before pulling herself up and dragging her feet to her bed.

She had to be at work in three hours.

  
  


  
  


***

  
  


  
  


Hunger was bad. Big predators never got hungry. They hunted, and they ate, and that was it. Too bad Beve was currently shaking from that big hunger and unable to do anything because she was elbow deep in blood, trying to keep a patient from dying in the emergency room.

There had been a big car accident on the junction between the Old Town and Dwarven Square, and the patients were pouring in, covered in blood, crying, screaming, holding onto broken arms. It was too much for Beve who hadn’t had time that morning to eat anything but an omelet made out of all the eggs in her fridge.

She was hungry for some meat, and there was a lot of it around.

She inhaled through her teeth, trying very hard to get the image out of her head – she really wanted to plant her teeth into someone’s thigh right now – and tried to focus back on sewing her patient up, which was hard with shaky hands.

It was her tenth hour on the job, she just needed to hold on for two more, and then she’d be able to get out of here and go somewhere to eat as many steaks as she could find.  Until then, well… She swallowed hard when her current patient whimpered, the predator in her wanting to jump at his throat and put him out of his misery.

  
  


  
  


***

  
  


  
  


There was a dead cat in front of her front door when she got out of her car, still swallowing the last of her nuggets. She had stopped at the first fast food restaurant she had found on her way back from work, and had gotten enough food for a small football team.  She felt better than she had all day, but the poor dead animal soured her mood in no time.

A groan resonated, from deep inside of her.

She was going to do something harsh, she just knew it.

She hadn’t had time to test out what else had come back with her senses – her super strength sure hadn’t, but it had seemed somewhat a little easier during the day to move patients around at the hospital.  Not that it mattered, because super strength or no, she still marched with determination up the slight slope leading out of her garden and into Wrynn’s carefully kept lawn, in the direction of the back patio where she could hear voices.

Mathias and whoever it was he had been talking to immediately stopped and got up from their chairs as she approached, and she didn’t stop until her fist had gotten in contact with Mathias’ jaw. He staggered one step to the right, and it put him in the path of the other wolf that immediately tried to jump on Beve, blocking him.

“Kill another cat and I’ll gut you,” she threatened, blaring her teeth and throwing daggers at him with her eyes.

Mathias took one step in her direction, and she mentally prepared herself, but nothing came, the two wolves facing her suddenly going tense as they exchanged a scared look.

“Fuck,” whispered the other wolf, but Beve couldn’t feel anything except for the sudden smell of fear on him – and anxiety coming off of Mathias.

She didn’t have to ask what was going on. Their Alpha was obviously the source of it – after all, Mathias might have been a complete jackass, he was also fearless, unless it came to Varian. She hadn’t needed super-smell to know that.

But where was Wrynn then?

“Where’s your Alpha?” she asked when nothing else happened for another minute.

“He’s busy elsewhere.”

She smirked at Mathias.

“Why is he in your head telling you not to move then?”

A muscle  twitched in his jaw, making her smirk bigger. At the peak of her strength, she would wipe the floor with him and use his bones as a toothpick. Not for the first time, she wished she could slip into her other skin and use her fangs and claws.

She took a step closer to him, and he bared his teeth.

“Get off his propriety.”

“Stop leaving dead animals in front of my door.”

His eyes flashed, the wolf coming to the surface, but she didn’t back down.

“Tell your Alpha this is the last time I’m coming here to talk about this.”

Mathias opened his mouth to answer, but she turned her back before he could, leaving him and his friend here with long strides.

  
  


  
  


***

  
  


  
  


Darbel was smiling at her over her cup of tea, the smoke from her burning incense  adding to the mysterious vibe her dark living room and crazy make-up were giving off. She took a sip, grabbed a little biscuit, and said in a silky voice.

“Soooo,” she started, “a little birdy told me you had a run-in with the wolves.”

Beve rolled her eyes. “You know exactly what happened, cut the crap.”

The witch’s smile grew bigger and she took a bite of her biscuit.

“I’m not telling you what you want to know.”

“I know. Is there anything you would like to tell me though?”

“You like marble counters?”

“I guess,” replied Beve, frowning slightly. She had learned a long time ago that every piece of detail given by Darbel could be useful, but sometimes it also came too late – or by the time you realized that what she had told you had happened, it was already over.

“What else?”

“You should find a blue couch,” she said, taking another bite of biscuit and chewing slowly. “It looks good with white fur.”

“Any other piece of advice that has nothing to do with interior decor?”

Darbel pretended to think for a second, and not for the first time Beve wondered how much she knew and how much she pretended to have known about after the fact.

“I think,” she started saying, very slowly, “that I would like to tell you that your allies might not be the most obvious ones, you just need to remember who tried and who didn’t try to kill you.”

“That’s nice,” she replied sarcastically.

Darbel lost a little of her smile, looking friendlier now, and she put her cup and biscuit down.

“I don’t know all the details, I just know some things, and the future is fluid, every second of every day you can do something that will make my visions untrue. We both know what you are and what you are capable of. I didn’t think that what is happening now would happen so early, but I think you’re ready.”

“Who’s leaving those dead animals on my front door?”

“You’ll find out soon enough.”

It wasn’t the answer Beve had wanted, but she started sipping her tea instead of saying anything else.

  
  


  
  


***

  
  


  
  


The following week went by fast. Beve would go to work at the hospital, come home to a new dead animal on her porch, and would pretend that she could not see the werewolves patrolling around the neighborhood. She knew they were there to keep an eye on her, not that she really understood why the pack would use up so much of their time for that when they believed her to be, at best, a human witch.

Not that they were very far from the truth, when it came to the things that matter. Despite the huge come back of the sight, smell and hearing that she had been born with, and maybe a little more force than before, nothing else had changed.

She had tried to slip into her other skin, the one she actually preferred, and had found herself unable to.  The disappointment was bitter on her tongue, and she tried to keep busy so she didn’t have to think about it.

On Thursday night, she was surprised to find a clean porch and a post-it note stuck to her front door.

“It’s been taken care of,” it said in black ink over simple white paper, the letters so straight and perfect it looked like it had been typed on a computer. Beve simply rolled her eyes and walked into her home. Of course Wrynn wouldn’t even sign his stupid note and not give any details.

She wondered what he had done to the culprit.  He wouldn’t have killed anyone, of course but maybe…

She stopped just as she was about to turn the lights on, frozen in place as she finally registered what her nose had been picking up.

There was someone bleeding out on the floor between her couch and coffee table.

The person was breathing very slowly and very shallowly, and the blood puddle was already big enough to mean trouble but that didn’t kick Beve into helping them.

Who were them? What did they want? Why were they here? How had they gotten in? Who had done this to them?

She took a deep breath in through her nose, and immediately regretted it when it made her gag.

Copper. A lot of it.

That only meant more trouble than she wanted, but she already knew what type of wound this person would support, and so she walked to them in careful small steps, ready to fight or run away at any sign of danger.

Instead of danger, it was a familiar face that greeted her.

“Oh no, Elina,” she whispered as she fell to her knees next to the woman she had grown up with, the one she had considered her sister, up until that fateful day.

Elina didn’t react, not even when Beve put her head on her lap and started petting her hair.  There was a very impressive first-aid kit sitting right under Beve’s sink, but even without being a trauma nurse she could tell that it was too late for the poor girl. They had gotten her right between the ribs with a copper dagger, just like Beve had been, but unlike Darbel she had been to late to come and save the day.

She wished she had been a better person and would have cried as her childhood friend, the first one she had ever made, slowly died in her arms, but it wasn’t who she was, and instead she could only think about what Elina’s presence here, in her home, in Stormwind, meant.

The way to Alterac had been opened again – that would explain the surge of magic and the comeback of some attributes.

That also meant that Beve had completely and utterly failed ten years before when she had sacrificed her own life to get the way sealed forever.

Another terrible thought came to her just as she was putting Elina’s head back on the floor and getting up, stopping her mid movement.

_She couldn’t have found the way to my living-room alone. Not while bleeding out so badly._

“Fuck,” she said, hands starting to shake as she suddenly straightened up and looked around the room. Nothing had moved in the kitchen corner nor on the gigantic bookcase separating the living-room and the bedroom. The whole house was one gigantic room and a small bathroom, and she doubted the people that had killed Elina would be hiding in her shower, but she still checked.

They were after her. They knew where to find her.

She would be dead in the hour, if they so wished it – they had managed to almost kill here while she had been at her strongest after all, and it wasn’t the small gun charged with silver bullet Darbel had given her that would make any difference.

Still, she put the gun in the small gym bag sitting at the very back of her tiny dresser. She added some clothes – mostly yoga pants and dark t-shirts, things that she would be able to fight in, and she changed the pants she was currently wearing for some black and stretchy jeans.

Once it was done, she grabbed her moisturizer from the edge of her bathroom sink, put her hair up in a crooked ponytail, and took just one second to look at her reflection in the mirror.

Dark blond hair, pale hazel eyes, dark blue circle underlining them. There was some blood on her cheek, and her hands and t-shirt were covered in it, but she didn’t have time for it. The woman who looked back at her seemed determined, although the spark of fear was very present in her eyes, but at least she looked like she would fight before letting anything or anyone get to her, and that was the most important.

With a small nod to herself, Beve grabbed her bag and car keys, left her phone on the kitchen counter, and walked out of her house without even bothering to lock the door.

Her old Subaru was supposed to be red, once upon a time. Nowadays, each door had its own color, along with the right front fender. She couldn’t get the windows to open at the front, and it took way too many tries until it finally started, but it was hers. She had paid for it cash – although, given, that hadn’t been that big of a sum of money – and more importantly, that car would take her far from this place in way less time than it would have taken her walking.

She told herself that she would be sad about leaving the life she had built for herself behind without a backward glance, along with the body of someone she had once loved, later. For now, she had to think of a plan, and fast, and that was easier said than done.

  
  


  
  


***

  
  


  
  


Between ditching her car and getting in a train to Redridge she had figured that going South was her best bet. The people after her,  _her_ people, weren’t really into warm weather, and it would be easier to disappear in the shady places hidden deep into Stranglethorn. She had taken one second to wonder if she should call Darbel while emptying half a perfume bottle on her at the train station, before deciding against it. The witch hadn’t wanted to tell her anything about it, which meant that either she knew this was happening, or worse she had no idea and would be of no help anyway.

Beve wouldn’t exactly call her a friend, but Darbel was the closest thing to it that she had, and she didn’t want anything to happen to her,  and it was no one’s problems but her own, after all.

It was time she dealt with things by herself.

She arrived at Lakeshire in the early evening and managed to find a bus to Booty Bay.

For the first four hours of the drive, she sat straight in her seat, eyes roaming over the bus and what she could make up through the window to her right.

On the fifth hour she fell asleep hugging her bag close to her chest and only woke up as the first traces of sunrise were appearing on the horizon as the bus was stopping in a gas station.

There were only four passengers on the bus and Beve was the only one not sleeping, so she figured that she could take a small bathroom break.  Once it was done, she got back inside the bus and paused for a second.

Three sleeping passengers, the bus driver turning the bus back on, and her, going back to sit at the back.

Someone had left the bus,  but the gas station was empty when she checked through the windows.

  
  


  
  


***

  
  


  
  


Beve didn’t feel calmer a week later.

Booty Bay was a busy coastal city with ferries and commercial boats coming and going at all hours of day and night. She had taken a room in a motel – the kind that had all the room facing the parking lot and that smelled worse than death itself – and spent most of her time huddled inside, hoping that no one would find out she was here.

It wasn’t a solution, she was acutely aware of that, but she hadn’t come up with a better idea so far.

For years, she had lived her life without having to worry about her past coming up to haunt her, and now there she was, grasping at straws, trying to save her skin and understand what the hell could have happened.

She had permanently closed the portal leading from this plane of existence to what had been hers. Some doors should have never been opened in the first place, starting from that one, and Beve had had to work secretly for what would have been _years_ here to make sure her plan would work – and it had.

She had succeeded in closing that door for good. Had bled out for it.

Someone must have opened another one. It was the only explanation, and she had an idea of who could be capable of it, not that it enchanted her.

Her brother would make sure not to leave her breathing, this time, she was sure.

Still, she needed to think about a better solution than hiding in some shitty room in Booty Bay of all places. Going North was out of question, but she could always take a boat. There were some pretty bad monsters hiding out in Kalimdor, but nothing she couldn’t handle – nothing she would choose her people over.

She’d rather fight an orc than her brother.

Someone knocked on her door before she could think more, and she sat frozen on the chair she had been occupying for the last day. She tried to breathe in and find out who it was, but the entire motel smelled too much of human sweat and sex and other bad things for her to tell. It was a good place for her to hide, but it meant she didn’t know who was on the other side of her door.

The person knocked again, before sighing.

“I know you’re here, you haven’t left this fucking room since you arrived,” said a man she had never heard before. “I don’t know who’s after you but I can assure you that I’m not with them. Shaw sent me to check on you.”

Beve frowned. Who the fuck was Shaw?

“I gotta say, by the way, thanks for that. This asshole now owes me and I intend on making it as painful for him as I can. There’s just something about this man suffering that makes me so happy…” He sighed dreamily, which didn’t help dissipate Beve’s confusion, quite the contrary.

“Anyway, he asked me to find you and keep an eye on you, just to make sure, but I’m starting to worry about you, staying holed up in this shit hole for a week.”

She didn’t move, keeping an eye on the door but moving her legs slightly so she could jump on him if he broke it open and came inside.

“I’m not sure if you’ve eaten anything, so I brought McDonald’s.”

There was a rustling of paper bag, and while Beve was more than aware of the hunger panging at her, she wasn’t stupid enough to risk it for a few french fries.

“My name is Flynn, by the way. You’re Beve, right? What a weird name, where are you from?”

She didn’t like him much already.

“The food won’t be good if you wait until it gets cold,” he said after a while.

Beve sighed, knowing that whatever she did now wouldn’t make a difference anyway. This idiot, whoever he was, had found her, meaning she needed to move anyway. She might as well hear what he had to say and why he was here – and eat the food, while she was at it.

She was _really_ hungry.

Slowly, because a week had been enough to make her paranoid, she walked to the door, making sure not to make any noise – barely breathing – and listened for a while.

The man on the other side did nothing but stand there, breathing.

She opened the door, satisfied to see him jump in surprise, and looked him up and down.

His hair was as long as hers, pulled back into a messy ponytail. He had beautiful blue eyes, with a mustache and goatee framing a tiny smirk as he held up one of the giant Mc Donald’s bag he was holding.

Beve finally picked up the scent of greasy food and her stomach finally growled.

“I’m Flynn,” smiled the man, looking earnest, “can I come in?”

Beve said nothing, simply stepping aside to let him in.

He went straight for the little table in the middle of the room, occupying the chair Beve hadn’t been sitting on, and pulling out burger after burger from his bags.

“I didn’t know what you liked, so I took one of everything, plus some.”

She went to sit on the other side of the table, never looking away from him, and simply started eating without a word.  Flynn, if that was his real name, only smiled, wished her bon appétit, and started eating too.

They didn’t stop nor move until there was no more food, and she could tell that he was impressed that she had eaten as much as a werewolf – because although from the other side of the door she hadn’t been able to tell, now that he was right in front of her it was clear that the man was a werewolf, meaning that whoever had sent him was probably a part of Wrynn’s pack.

Just what she needed.

“Who’s Shaw?” she asked after a moment where they both put down their enormous sodas and just looked at each other.

“Mathias Shaw, he’s the second of Varian Wrynn, the Alpha where you live.”

She nodded.  That made sense. She knew they would find the body  pretty fast – those idiots had nothing better to do than patrol not far from her house and put their nose where it didn’t belong, after all. She hadn’t counted on them caring though, especially not to the point of sending someone to keep an eye on her.

She suddenly regretted not taking a boat to some faraway town on the very first day she had arrived.

“How did you find me?”

“Someone followed you all the way here and told me where to go.”

That made Beve frown as she thought back on the mysterious passenger in the bus that had disappeared in the middle of nowhere. She hadn’t smell werewolf, but maybe it had been something else – fuck, maybe it had even been a human.

“You know, I wasn’t expecting you to look like that. I thought you’d be smaller and… uh, maybe a little more scared looking?”

Beve scowled, which made him laugh.

“I didn’t know there was a pack here,” she said, as if she knew anything about werewolves.

She had known that they existed, of course, but most of what she knew she had learned by living next to them and what Darbel had told her. There were no werewolves where she came from, and she regretted having to spend so much time near those creatures now.

“There are no packs here, I fly solo.”

“But you listen to Mathias, of all people.”

Flynn winked, giving her a wolfish smirk. “Let’s say I gain more by doing this than annoying him, at least for now.”

She squinted at him and he laughed softly.

“Look, I don’t know what happened, all I know is that apparently someone died and you disappeared. Now, it’s none of my business what you do in your spare time, but next time you wanna hit the road just tell your Alpha what’s happening and where you’re going.”

“He’s not my Alpha, I’m no werewolf.”

Flynn winked again, and she  _really_ didn’t like the spark of amusement in his eyes. “Sure, but you don’t need to be a werewolf for him to be yours, now do you?”

And he laughed at the face she made.

“Come on, you have to admit that it’s hilarious! A witch and an Alpha! What are the chances?”

She didn’t understand what he meant by that,  but something took  her focus away before she could ask more about it.

Something was calling out to her in the parking lot. It was a bad idea to get up and go take a look, but she couldn’t stop herself, something pulling her in from her very core, and she barely registered Flynn calling her name and trying to stop her as she stepped outside of her shitty room and met dark eyes on the other side of the lot.

“Beve,” said the man, softly, but she still heard him.

“Dimitris,” she breathed, feeling her world shudder.

He had died that day, before she had ended up on top of a mountain.

So had she, so maybe she shouldn’t have been this surprised.

However, her surprise and happiness didn’t explain why, when Dimitris held his hand up in her direction, she didn’t move to get out of the way of the spell. It hit her right in the chest, and she fell back, the cold and darkness immediately enclosing her as she tried to take a breath in.

She started convulsing, feeling someone holding her down and screaming something above her, but her sight was suddenly blurry and no matter how much she tried, she couldn’t form a single word around the lump in her throat, leaving her hyperventilating on the ground.

Dimitris was a smart man. She knew exactly what he had done, and what he was trying to do. It shouldn’t have worked though, not now that she was a simple human being who had started having heightened senses only a dozen days ago.

It should have killed her.

She wished it did when the spell finally settled and the excruciating pain started rolling all over her body.

  
  


  
  


***

  
  


  
  


When Beve came to, everything was hurting to the point of making her want to throw up. She knew she had spent at least an hour screaming from how soar her throat felt, and she only realized that someone was holding her up when the hand cradling her head moved to get her more comfortable.

She reached up, managed to grab onto something soft, and she held on for dear life, gritting her teeth against the pulse of agony starting in her toes and running up to her head.

Someone made shushing sounds near her ear, and she whimpered, pulling whatever she was holding onto closer to her.

“Please you need to calm down, she’s not gonna die,” said someone when another pulse came and she moaned this time.

“Just keep driving.”

“Easy for you to say…”

The hand cradling her head moved again, this time bringing her closer to what she was holding onto, and she let her face rest against the soft material. When she breathed in it smelled of soap, peppermint, leather and some discreet perfume.

Her brain recognized it, but she was too overcome to think about it, especially when she felt the beginning of another convulsion attack make her limbs tremble.

“No…” she managed to grit between her teeth, trying to resist it, body suddenly covered in cold sweat as the muscles in her legs tensed.

“Breathe,” said a voice against her ear, “breathe Beve, come on.”

She could feel a deep rumble against her face, and she pressed herself more fully against the hard thing supporting her weight as her whole body convulsed.

For a while, there was nothing else. Only the convulsion, the pain going through her body, and whatever she was holding.

“This is the first time I see someone having so many seizures,” said one of the voices she had heard at some point earlier when her muscles finally relaxed and she could breathe more or less normally again – she couldn’t tell how much time had passed.

“She’s not epileptic,” commented the voice against her ear.

Beve wanted to say something but couldn’t find the strength, so she tried to move back instead and opened her eyes, only to realize that she couldn’t see anything.

“ _Shit_ , calm down! Calm down Beve!” ordered the person closest to her as she started thrashing around, and she growled as she fell magic grow thick around them, but that didn’t stop her, on the contrary. “Stop it!”

“D-d-dim–” she tried, still gripping the soft fabric that smelled good.

“What is she saying?”

That voice finally clicked. Flynn. He had been there when Dimitris had sent the spell.

“Dim–” she tried again, unable to finish the word.

“Should we turn on the light?”

“Shut up,” gritted the voice closest to her, before the hand on her head moved, and suddenly she realized that she was pressing her face against a chest since the beginning, and that this person was now hugging her instead of just holding her.

She had no idea who it was, but she moaned in pain and fear as her muscles tensed again before she could think more on it, and she had no choice but let whoever it was cradle her close as she convulsed again.

Next time she was aware of some of her surroundings again, something was pressed against her lips and she dutifully let it slip inside of her mouth when she realized it was a straw, drinking up the cold water.

She hadn’t realized how thirsty she felt.

“Slow,” said the same voice as before, “we don’t want you to throw up again.”

She had no memory of throwing up, and it didn’t smell like it, wherever she was.

“You have to hold on for a few more hours, okay?” asked the person, sounding as soft as the fingers that brushed her hair off her face.

She was laying down on something hard but soft. It was leather, from the feel of it, but the water was taken away and the person grabbed her hand before she could go exploring more, putting her hand down so her arm was resting along her body.

“Mathias and his dummy will be back soon, and then we’re not stopping anymore until we get you somewhere safe, okay?”

She grunted, still not seeing anything – but at least now everything was a light shade of gray, instead of pitch back – and the person helped her when she tried to sit up.

“You can’t see anything, right?”

She nodded, and reached in front of her until she could feel the soft fabric again, tangling her fingers in it again and bringing it closer until her head was resting against a shoulder, her nose right in the hollow of his collarbone.

It was a man, who had come all the way here with Mathias, and who had used magic when he had tried to give her an order. He was swearing and yelling at her with absolutely no problem.

She knew his perfume.

Any other time, she would have rather died than be so vulnerable and cuddling with Varian Wrynn, of all people, but as the shudder of a new seizure ran through her body, she was glad that he was here to hold on to her and make sure she didn’t bump her head all over the place.

  
  


  
  


***

  
  


  
  


Beve must have fallen asleep, because the next time she opened her eyes, she could finally see, and that simple fact was so overwhelmingly reassuring, she had to close her eyes and breathe slowly to make sure she wouldn’t pass out from the happy rush.

She didn’t know how much time had passed, but now that she could think clearly some things made a little more sense. She had laid on the back seat of a car for the better part of a day, if she wasn’t too wrong. That’s where Varian had been, holding her and helping her drink water. She had some vague memory of fresh fries and some kind of applesauce, but she couldn’t be sure of that. She also remember being bridal carried out of said car, the piece of clothing she had been holding onto since she had first been more of less awake wrapped around her.

When she looked down, she did find a red and thick plaid shirt covering her like a cover, and she gently pushed it away and sat up, dizzy as she looked around.

She was laying on a single bed, in what appeared to be a very tiny studio apartment on the fourth or fifth floor of a building. She tried to recognize some buildings that she could see through the closest window, but she was pretty sure she had never been in that city before.

There was no one else in the studio – she could hear the person living right above doing the dishes, and two kids in front of the building talking about their favorite cartoon character, and some dog was barking in the next building.

Nothing coming from this floor, except for her fast-beating heart, and the scent of whoever’s bed she was laying on.

She got up, almost fell to her knees when everything turned around her, and she managed to stumble to the tucked-away door that lead her to a tiny bathroom, before she was doubling over and throwing up, heaving hard enough that it hurt.

Most of it ended up in the sink.

She did fall to her knees the second she stopped, and just stayed there, on the floor, panting.

Her hearing was better than it had been the last time she was aware of her surrounding.  So was her nose, she realized as she moved her arm and realized that the thing that smelled so bad was her.  The shower looked clean, and there was shampoo and soap bottles in there. When she looked under the sink she found clean towels, and there was no one else around, so she dragged herself to the shower, took her clothes off, and just sat under the warm water for a while, feeling her painful muscles relax.

She had to put her dirty clothes back on once she was done and had emptied the hot water balloon, but she felt much better – good enough to stand on her own and go have a look around.

The studio was very small and bare and old, but it was clean. A man was living here, her nose had told her and the content of the small wardrobe confirmed it, and she was pretty sure he had to be a werewolf, but that was all. There was an old photo of a blond kid taped right above the bed, and Beve strangely felt like she had seen that kid before, but she couldn’t place him.

A better look outside only confirmed that she had no idea where she was, but she could see the big matte black SUV that Wrynn had brought about two months prior, parked right outside of the building. The car looked ridiculously luxurious next to everything else around, but she couldn’t see any wolf nearby.

Her legs were feeling like wet noodles, but that didn’t stop her from leaving the studio, and the building a few minutes later.  She walked slowly, trying to guess where she could be, and where the people who had taken her here had gone to, but after twenty minutes of just walking and trying not to pass out or jump at all the sounds she could suddenly hear, she had to come to the conclusion that she was all alone in a strange city, lost.

Sighing, she stopped next to a shoe store, and thanked herself for grabbing Wrynn’s shirt and tying it around her waist before leaving the studio apartment. There was a phone tucked into the pocket, and she unlocked it without needing a password, looking at the saved numbers.

It was a lot of names she didn’t know, and she stopped on Mathias Shaw without hesitation.

“You’re awake,” announced Wrynn on the line after only one ring.

“Don’t sound so disappointed,” she replied, looking at the shoes on display. “Where are we?”

“Goldshire. I wasn’t willing to drive two hours more to Stormwind, so we stopped as soon as we could.”

Two hours was a little optimistic, but then again she had been too out of it to realize if they had respected the speed limit or not. Something was telling her they hadn’t.

“It’s been five days Beve.” She frowned. “I called Darbel, but she said there was nothing that she could do, told us point blank to let you have those seizures and just hope that you’d survive. Wanna comment on that?”

There was nothing she could have said.

He made a small hmf sound when she didn’t speak.

“You only stopped having them last night,” he said, and judging by the color of the sky it must have been five in the afternoon, approaching six. “We left you at the apartment because we had some business to take care of, but we haven’t gone far.”

_Don’t go running or we’ll find you before you can even think about which way to go_ was the underlying threat here, but she was too exhausted to care.

“I’m in front of a shoe shop,” she said after a full three minutes of silence.

He sighed, and she knew exactly the pinched expression that was on his face at that moment — it was the one he almost always wore in front of her, only replaced by righteous fury from time to time.

That made her feel better to have something familiar to hold on to.

“You’re gonna have to be a little more precise than that,” he said.

She ended the call and sent him a photo of the shoes she was looking at instead. Darbel had taught her how to use a smartphone after she had seen her with a flip phone and never missed a chance to remind her — not that Beve had changed phone, but whatever.

Wrynn called her back the second he saw the photo.

“Are you serious?”

“I turned left outside of the building,” she said, smiling when he sighed like he was pained.

“What the fuck am I even…” she heard him grumble as he ended the call.

Snorting, and immediately regretting it when her entire body protested, she put the phone in the back pocket of her jeans and leaned her back against the window of the shop to wait for him.

  
  


***

  
  


  
  


It took him about thirty five minutes to arrive, and in this half hour Beve had ended up sitting directly on the ground, with the shirt around her shoulders.

For some reasons, she was cold despite the warm breeze of the end of the summer, not to the point of shuddering with it, but almost.

Wrynn looked a little furious, but the happiest she had ever seen him was mildly pissed off, so it didn’t scare her too much. He was wearing a tight gray tshirt with dark jeans, his hair an extremely messy bun at the back of his head with long strands flying everywhere as he determinedly crossed the street toward her.

Several people turned to look at him as he passed them by, and _not_ because he looked pissed as hell, and for a second Beve wondered what it was like, to not know that he was an annoying as fuck Alpha who was anal about her not ever cutting her grass and never repainting her house.

He was a control freak and she was pretty sure it had come a long time before he had become a werewolf, but as he stepped right in front of her and squated down to be at eye level with her, he looked just a tiny bit not mad.

Just a tiny little mini bit.

She smirked at the mild annoyance on his face, seeing it morph into full on blown annoyance, and asked imperially.

“What took you so long?”

“Some idiot showered with the first soap she could find and it was a little hard to trace her scent.”

“Some idiot _really_ needed that shower though.”

“You have puke in your hair,” was all he had to say to that, before he was grabbing her by the elbow and more or less pulling her to her feet.

She let him lead her as he started walking to a different direction than the one he had come from, too weak and tired to protest, and not caring enough to say anything anyway.

He lead her through the streets like someone who knew exactly where he was and where he wanted to go, and she realized that if he had brought her here to some guy’s apartment, it was probably because he knew the guy.

Or he had killed some poor dude just to hide her, but considering what she knew of him she highly doubted that.

They stopped at a small café, the type that was dark with saxo music that was just this side of loud to make it impossible to hear anyone except the person sitting right next to you.

He held up two fingers for the barista standing behind the bar as they passed it, and went to sit at a table at the very back of the room.

The two chairs were facing each other but Wrynn moved one so both chairs were side to side, back to the wall. She preferred it that way too, but kept her mouth shut as she sat down.

Two seconds later the barista was here, putting down two espressos and a giant slice of carrot cake.

He smelled like the apartment she had woken up in, and unsurprisingly he was a werewolf — she could see it in the way he didn’t meet Wrynn’s eyes, and kept himself just out of reach.

Alphas were the most dominant and commended respect from all other werewolves, and even as someone who hadn’t made any effort to learn about them Beve could tell that this one was doing a little too much.

Wrynn didn’t pay any attention to him though, instead wrapping the fingers of his left hand around the tiny cup of coffee, and looking down at the black liquid.

For a second, Beve simply looked at him, wondering what was going on.

Wrynn was a bastard, but he wasn’t a bad guy. She had learned it pretty fast, but it was about the only thing she was sure about when it came to him. His wolves adored him which she didn’t exactly understand why, he was rich as fuck, which she didn’t know why, and more mysteriously, he had two gigantic scars crossing his face.

Werewolves didn’t have scars. None of them. She had asked Darbel to be sure, and the witch had agreed — but had also smiled and added “except Varian Wrynn”. Beve had always wondered, but she had scars of her own that she didn’t want to talk about, so she shut up about it, which was made easy by the fact that she did her best at all times to stay as far away from her neighbor as she could.

Now that he was sitting next to her in a dimly lit café, the scars were the only thing she could see clearly.

She grabbed the fork the barista had left and took a piece a the cake instead, trying not to grimace. Carrot wasn’t supposed to be cake, but she was hungry after her little moment with the sink, and her clothes were a lot bigger than they had been before she had left her house in the middle of the night about two weeks ago.

“This carrot cake always tasted like shit,” grumbled Wrynn under his breath after she had eaten about a quarter of it and found that she was already full.

“The boss insists on selling it,” grumbled back the barista.

Beve didn’t react because she knew a normal human-slash-potential-witch wasn’t supposed to hear from that distance, but she caught the expression that came and went on Wrynn’s face faster than a heartbeat.

Oh yeah, there was some history with that barista.

She kept her mouth shut though, and took a tentative sip of coffee — and grimaced at the bitter taste. Espresso was definitely not her thing.

“Who was the dead girl in your living room?” asked Wrynn before she could think of something else to do or say, and the sudden lurch in her chest made her pale.

“She used to be my friend,” she replied after a moment, not knowing what else to say.

He probably wouldn’t have believed her if she had told him the whole story, and didn’t have enough time for that anyway. A few days ago she wouldn’t have bothered to even respond to him, but he had gotten all the way to Booty Bay to get her, so she guessed she owed him at least that.

“I didn’t kill her,” she added before he could ask that question. “I came home from work, and she was laying there. I arrived just in time to see her die.”

Varian put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed it, and it felt weirdly comforting.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and for a while they didn’t say more.

It should have been weirder, to have Varian of all people comfort her after the death of Elina, of all people, but those past two weeks had been the weirdest weeks of her life, so maybe she shouldn’t have been that surprised. Still, she knew exactly what the next question was going to be about, so she made the best out of the silence and offered comfort.

“Flynn said there was a man in the parking lot of your motel,” said Varian, as expected, taking his hand away. “He’s the one who did this to you.”

_I’m the one who did this to him_ , she thought, but she couldn’t say that out loud, ever, to anyone.

“It’s true,” she replied, meeting Wrynn’s light gray eyes and holding his gaze.

She could see his shoulders tense, but she didn’t look down or away. Alpha or not, she wouldn’t act submissive while talking about surviving a very deadly spell.

“Who was he?”

Beve opened her mouth to replied, started forming the words “My broth–”, before there was a flash of light and she fell back  on her chair, convulsing.

She realized she was the only one blinded by the light when strong hands grabbed her and gently laid her down on the floor, a familiar voice calling her name and swearing loudly as everything slowly faded away.

There was a strikingly blue sky above her, when she gained her sight back. She turned her head to the right, and caught sight of a destroyed tower.

Something grabbed her by the chin and suddenly she was back in the coffee shop, looking up at Varian Wrynn for all of a second before her eyes were rolling back in her head, and she was back in front of the tower, gigantic pieces of walls that had been blown up laying on the snow covered ground around her.

She remembered what had happened. The top half of the tower had disappeared because of her, and the rest hadn’t resisted when her father had thrown her through the walls.  She had ended up right where she was laying right now.

Her father had stabbed her right here, but when she looked down at the snow around her, it wasn’t covered in blood anymore. It hadn’t been the killing blow though. She had still managed to raise her hand and throw spells to defend herself  before getting back up on her feet .  The fight had ended up a few kilometers away, near the altar. That was where he had managed to catch her right between the ribs, at the right angle, just as she was using the same spell Dimitris had used on her a few days ago.

Her father had dropped dead on the spot, and Beve had been sent to the top of the mountain where Darbel had found her, wounded but victorious.

She wondered if this was a dream – and that would be a first for her, to dream of being here –  when there was a new flash, and for a second she was back at the coffee shop except now the barista was kneeling next to her and Wrynn, telling him to calm down.

She opened her mouth to say something, but thankfully didn’t, finding herself back in the snow, someone else looking down at her.

“Hello sister,” smiled Aliden, holding his hand out to her.

She grabbed it and got to her feet with his help, only slightly stumbling. She didn’t fully trust him, but it wasn’t like she had a choice. He was more than probably the reason she was standing there at this moment, so she might as well hear what he wanted so she could go back to the coffee shop for good and see what the werewolves were up to.

“You shouldn’t have been able to call me,” she said when her brother only looked at her without saying anything.

“I know. And I shouldn’t have been able to open up a door either, but a lot of things that are impossible are happening at the moment, so it doesn’t matter.”

“Why did you kill Elina?”

“The right question is why did she die on the floor of your home.”

That made her stop, and frown.

For a second there was a flash, and she saw Wrynn bring her face close, his hands of her cheek as she continued to convulse.

“You’re going to die soon too,” said Aliden in the next second, when she found herself back with him. “Dimitris made a dire mistake by using this spell on you. I tried to stop him from going after you, but as usual our brother doesn’t listen to anyone.”

“We both know what he was trying to accomplish with it,” she replied, looking closely at her brother. With their father dead and her out of the equation, Aliden was the most powerful of their people, and their leader. By trying to kill her, Dimitris had tried to kick in the ancestral law of ruling – the exact same law that had permitted her father’s death, but only by her hand.

She had survived the spell, so she should be their ruler now. It was the law. The true leader wouldn’t die from it – but it seemed like their brother had forgotten that Beve had been thrown out by their father before his death. It was the reason she had lost everything and had become a simple human.

“I can’t be an outsider and the ruler.”

“I know,” replied Aliden. “But you shouldn’t feel a rush of power when a door opens, either,” he said, and Beve knew immediately that he was talking about the return of her senses.

She had known, that this was what had happened, but it was still a shock  to have the confirmation.

“So what? I’m stuck in-between now, until I finally die from a seizure?”

“Exactly.”

Sighing, Beve felt fingers ghosting over her face, and if she focused on it, she could even feel the hard wooden floor of the coffee shop under her. That didn’t make her feel better, but it wasn’t like she had had any delusions about her situation.

“Who killed Elina, then?”

“Otto, of course.”

She sighed, and let herself fall on the snow again, this time sitting. Of course this brute would be the one to deliver this kind of warning. He wasn’t the most  discreet one, and a few werewolves patrolling around her house wouldn’t stop him. He had always hated her guts, and she had felt the same about him.

“How long do I have?”

“I don’t know, you need to find Dimitris and ask him.”

“Dimitris has no idea how those things work. He took a shot in the dark, and now look at me,” she replied, gritting her teeth.

She had survived an entire decade as a human, and now she would die because people thought they knew better than her.

“How did the door even open?”

“I don’t know. One day the seal just cracked open.”

“Fuck,” she breathed out, looking up at her brother.

They had the exact same eyes, and she had to admit that she had missed him quite badly.

“I thought you’d try to kill me,” she admitted after a while.

“I didn’t agree with you when you thought that the only solution for our people was to kill their leader, who was also our father, but time proved that you were right. We’re all doing much better without him.”

“So you forgive me?”

“There’s nothing to forgive. I knew you reasons then, and I understand them now. You’re my sister and I don’t want you to die.”

“It seems like we don’t have a choice in the matter,” she said, “but I’m still gonna make sure that Otto pays before I drop dead.”

Aliden gave her a sad smile.

“That’s my girl,” he said, “now I’ll let you go back. Please, try to stay where those wolves can keep an eye on you.”

“How do you even know about them?!” she asked, but Aliden and the snow had disappeared before the end of her sentence, and she felt her entire body finally relax as she opened her eyes to find Wrynn and the barista still crowding her.

“Shit,” whispered the barista, wiping the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand.

For a second, Beve didn’t understand why he looked like he had just ran a marathon, but then her eyes went to Wrynn, who’s eyes were a striking shade of gold, with the muscles in his jaw jumping from how hard he was gritting his teeth, and she knew that his wolf was in control.

From what she had learned during her years living next to a pack, she knew that a wolf in control was a  _very_ bad thing.

“I’m okay,” she grumbled as she tried to sit up and Wrynn helped her with a hand supporting her back.

“You better tell me what _the fuck_ is happening,” he said, his voice a deep, _dangerous_ rumble.

She shivered, her body reacting to the danger of having a furious werewolf close enough to bite off her throat.  Too bad her brain was still a little out of it, so she frowned at him and met his eyes instead of looking down and appeasing him by showing off her neck.

He started groaning loudly, the barista immediately sliding backward on the floor until his back was against the farthest wall, his eyes trained to the floor and his clammy skin pale.

“Stop groaning,” she snapped, entire body covered in shiver, and she had the fleeting thought that maybe the shivering wasn’t caused by fear or some form of survival instinct.

That didn’t stop him, on the contrary he started showing his teeth, and Beve didn’t even think as she reached up to grab the collar of his tight t-shirt with her right hand and brought him closer, showing her teeth too.

“Relax,” she ordered, looking straight into his eyes, expecting him to just kill her at the order.

His shoulders relaxed instead and he stopped groaning. He looked confused and distressed for a second, before she was pulling him even closer, and he pressed his forehead against her shoulder, entire body going lax as he put his entire weight against her.

“What the fuck is going on?” he whispered against the shirt she was wearing.

He moved his head, until his nose was pressed directly against the skin of her throat, and she realized what he was doing when she felt him breathe in deeply.

She wasn’t wearing any perfume and he had complained that she had used the barista’s soap during her shower, but she guessed her own scent was still there, and he had just found it.

Swallowing through the strange lump in her throat, Beve looked up at the other wolf, who was staring at them with big eyes and frowned eyebrows. She felt the same way, and when he met her eyes his confusion only grew, but he stayed silent and unmoving, so Beve turned her attention back to the werewolf who was now wrapping his arms around her waist and was putting even more of his weight on her.

In about a minute she would fall back against the floor and then die suffocating under his weight.

“It’s just seizures,” she whispered when it was clear he was expecting an answer.

“You smell like winter and magic,” he replied, pulling her closer.

She didn’t have anything to say to that, so she stayed silent.

“Varian,” said the barista after a full three minutes. He looked a lot calmer than before, but still confused and slightly scared – for her or himself, Beve had no idea. “Varian, you need to get a grip on your wolf again, I think. Mathias is probably on his way. You shouldn’t be seen like this.”

Varian groaned, but didn’t move.

The barista sent an alarmed look her way, and while she didn’t like being stuck like this, Beve also didn’t want to see werewolves brawling here, just because of her brothers’ shenanigans.

“Come on,” she whispered, gently pushing Wrynn away, surprised that he followed the movement and looked up at her with mostly gray eyes. “I’m tired and hungry.”

He nodded, and closed his eyes for a second, breathing slowly. When he opened them again and got up, he was back to normal, no trace of the wolf left in his eyes or his posture.

“Sorry for that Bolvar,” he said as he helped Beve up by gently grabbing her elbows and pulling her up.

“No worries,” replied the barista, though his voice was strained and he didn’t move from his position on the floor.

“I’ll make it up to you.”

“Careful, you already owe me one for using my apartment.”

Wrynn snorted, proving that he was really in control and calm again, so Beve let him lead her out of the shop, walking slowly and letting him support most of her weight.

She hadn’t lied when telling him that she was tired and hungry – in fact she had minimized it, because she was absolutely starving and exhausted, and what Aliden had told her was spinning around her head, making her dizzy.

If Dimitris had found her in Booty Bay, it wouldn’t be too hard for Otto to find her too – and to have followed her all the way here.

“We need to keep moving,” she said as they passed the now closed shoe shop she had waited in front of before.

“We will, once you stop having those seizures.”

It wasn’t happening then. She sent him a quick side look, but he was focusing on where she was putting her feet, and looked completely  absorbed by the task at hand. That left her some time to think about what she was going to do then, which was good.

She was pretty sure she couldn’t beat Otto on one on one combat, but with an Alpha and his second…

Yes, she was pretty sure she knew exactly how things would unfold, she just needed to convince Wrynn to get out of this city.

“What’s the color of your couch?” she asked, remembering a detail Darbel had told her.

“Cream,” he replied, frowning at her.

“I see,” she breathed. Not his house then. Darbel had asked about a blue couch. Hers was black, Darbel’s was a dark red that perfectly matched the drapes around her windows.

Maybe Darbel’s sentence had had nothing to do with anything going on at the moment, but if Beve was supposed to die sooner rather than later, she was pretty sure that detail was important.

“I need to find a blue couch,” she announced, and her neighbor completely ignored her.

  
  


  
  


***

  
  


  
  


There was a train that took thirty five minutes to go from Goldshire to Stormwind. It went right under the mountains that had to be crossed by car, which was the reason for such a short travel time, but Beve had no idea how she would be able to get to the train station when she always had a werewolf keeping her company.

Most of the time it was Wrynn, but Flynn and Mathias also hanged around when the Alpha wasn’t here, and on one occasion she found herself alone at the studio apartment with the barista – Bolvar, if she remembered his name correctly.

It had been four days since she had woken up there, and she had had about two seizures per day in that time.

“You’re not in his pack,” she said when the stupid show Bolvar and her had been watching ended and some ads for a coffee machine started playing.

“Not anymore,” he replied, keeping his eyes on the television. “What about you? Do you have any ideas about what is going on?”

“What do you mean?”

He sent her a quick look, before focusing back on the screen.

“How much do you know about werewolves? Especially Alphas?”

“Not much.”

“Still, you know enough to be aware of what happens when a wolf takes control, especially an Alpha, and how to act in this case.”

She didn’t reply, because she knew exactly what he was going to say next.

“And you see, usually no one looks an Alpha in the eyes, since it is seen as a sign of dominance for us, and an Alpha is _always_ more dominant, but when that Alpha has lost control of his wolf? Well, you should have died, _especially_ since you gave him an order.”

He turned to look at her then.

“Instead, he listened to you.”

She couldn’t really tell him the truth, that she was a way bigger predator, or had been at least. That she knew all about dominance and looking people in the eyes as a threat, or a way to start a fight. She had been at the top of the food chain for too long to care about it now that she wasn’t a part of it anymore, and maybe some things stayed no matter what.

“You should have a talk with Varian. You need to understand what really happened the other day, and it’s not my place to tell you.”

That made her frown.

“Why? What did he do?”

“Ask him, you shouldn’t hear it from anyone else.”

“Why?”

“It’s too important, and I also have no ideas why he would do that.”

It took Beve by surprise, when fear suddenly gripped her by the gut and kept her in place. She had told herself that if she had managed to stand her ground all this time without dying, it was because of who she was – or had been, whatever. That the wolves could instinctively feel her power, even if it wasn’t hers anymore, that the animal part of them recognized the animal part of her.

Instead, Bolvar was now telling her that Varian had done something? Something that was also bad enough that he had to be the one to explain himself?

Well, good thing she wouldn’t have to deal with this bullshit for much longer.

“Listen,” she said after a while, “you’re not one of his wolf, right?”

He shook his head.

“Good, cause I’m pretty sure he ordered Mathias and that other guy to not let me out of this place, but I really need to get going.”

“He can’t order me around anymore, but he did make it clear that there will be hell to pay if I let you get out of my sight.”

“Then come with me,” she said, because after all, a werewolf could always be useful, especially against Otto. “I just need to get back to Stormwind.”

“Didn’t you run away and that’s how you all ended up here?”

“I did, but some new information came.”

“I’ve made an enemy of him once, and I’m not eager to do it again.”

“Even if it’s the only way to save me?” and she should have felt bad for it when he sharply turned to look at her at this, especially since she knew damn well it was a half-lie. Sure finding and killing Otto would save her – just long enough for the seizures to fry her brain once and for all.

For a moment, he seemed to ponder over it.

“I’m listening,” he said, and she made the executive decision to be frank with him.

“There’s someone after me. His name is Otto, and he’s the one who killed my childhood bestfriend and put the body in my living room. Here’s the thing though, I have no chance against him, but you do. So, the plan is that we both go back to Stormwind, where he’s probably looking for me, cause if he had known about me going away he would have followed and there would be new bodies, and take care of him.”

“Why not ask Varian? He’s a much better fighter than me.”

“You think he would let me march straight to danger? He’s not even letting me sleep without Mathias keeping an eye on me.”

Bolvar chucked.

“It’s true, okay, but I’m still not convinced that he won’t kill me very slowly and painfully for putting you in danger.”

“You think he’ll take it nicely if I die and you did nothing?”

He squinted at her. “Why do I feel like I cannot win right now?”

“Because you can’t. Either you come with me, which ups my chances of not dying, or you don’t, but that’s not going to stop me from leaving the second I get the chance to.”

She wasn’t exactly bluffing per say, but if he didn’t come with her, her first stop would be to find a gun and Dimitris. Then maybe she’d try a direct confrontation against Otto – although, if she had a choice in the matter she’d prefer to attack him when he wasn’t expecting it.

“Fuck,” he sighed, running his hands through his hair, “it’s not like I have a lot to lose, since my life sucks anyway.”

“That’s the spirit,” she replied, smiling for real for the first time in a long while.

“Alright, let’s go then, before they all come back.”

Nodding, Beve got up, grabbed the red shirt she still hadn’t given back to the Alpha, and slipped it on as they were leaving the apartment.

  
  


  
  


***

  
  


  
  


“I remember when you moved next to the pack, because it was the first time in about two years Varian called me, just to complain,” Bolvar told her just as they were starting the long and difficult drive through the mountains.

“You left the pack?”

He shook his head. “I was thrown out, but it’s a long and complicated story that Varian and I don’t talk about. I’ve known him all my life though, we grew up and got changed together.”

She was happy to be traveling with him instead of that Flynn guy, or worse Mathias, because Bolvar wasn’t shy about giving out information.

“He’s the only Alpha I’ve ever had, and he’s a damn good one, and for the longest time I couldn’t understand why a witch buying the house next to his was driving him insane.”

“It was hate at first sight,” she replied, which made him snort.

“ _Right_. If only, I think he would like it better. But anyway, thanks to you he started talking to me again, so thank you for that, even if it won’t ever happen again the second he realizes what we are doing right now.”

“No worries, I’ll make sure that all his fury is directed at me so you’ll be able to slip away.”

The werewolf laughed out loud, and Beve realized that he was the most normal one she had ever seen. All the ones in Wrynn’s pack were frowning and acting like bodyguards on the job whenever she saw them – at the pack’s house, or out and about in Stormwind. It was weird, because up until then she had never thought about werewolves being normal people who could act like it, but Bolvar was proving quite the contrary.

Maybe he had been too normal for the pack and that was why he had been thrown out.

“Anyway, you are exactly like I had imagined, which is actually hilarious, down to being swimming in trouble.”

“Did he tell you about the dead animals?”

He sent her a quick look, before focusing back on the road and the very steep left turn coming up. “He did. Turns out the pack isn’t super happy about you, at least some members, and they thought they were being very smart and smooth by putting them in front of your door as a warning.”

“He left a message on my door saying that he had taken care of it.”

“I don’t know about this, but I’m inclined to believe it.”

They didn’t talk much for a while after that, and Bolvar turned on the radio to some pop music station.

  
  


  
  


***

  
  


  
  


They arrived in the middle of the night, and Beve knew that Otto had been back before even stepping out of the car. Her entire garden smelled like him – a strange mix between the inside of a freezer, pine trees and magic.

It reminded her of home.

Elina’s body wasn’t there anymore, but no one had done anything to the gigantic blood stain, and the smell was a little too much for her, but she still had to pretend to be a normal human, so she held her breath as she went to her bedroom to grab more clothes, before getting back out.

“Now what?” asked Bolvar.

The smell of magic floating all around had given her an idea, but now was not the time, nor was she in the good place.

“We need a place to lay low for a few hours.”

For a moment, Bolvar simply looked at her without a word, before taking his phone out and starting to type on it.

“I’m gonna do something extremely stupid, so you have to promise me that whoever is coming after you will be easy to kill between the two of us.”

“I promise,” she said, because it was true. Bolvar had the muscles, and she was pretty sure she’d be able to gather enough juice to throw a spell before a seizure would kill her. After all, she had been able to travel all the way to Aliden while laying on a coffee shop’s floor.

Surely, she could manage one little spell this one time.

They got back into the car, Beve keeping the little bag she had taken  from her home on her knees. There was a copper dagger in there, and while she hoped she wouldn’t have to use it, she felt a little better knowing that it was in there, within reach.

Traffic was minimal, considering the hour, and they arrived in the richest part of  the Trade District, with its tall and glimmering sky scrapper. She lost a little track of where they were, not used to navigating those large streets, and only realized they had arrived when the car slid into some underground parking lot.

She followed Bolvar out of the car and into the elevator without a word, watching curiously as he pressed the “penthouse” button and pressed a key into the hole right under the button.

The elevator was silent and fast as it glided up to the last floor of the building – the 52 nd , and she was pretty sure the last time she had been so up in the sky, she had been stranding at the top of a mountain, not inside a building.

The elevator’s doors opened into a large and pristine entryway, with black marble on the floor, and Bolvar walked in without a single glance at the  opulence all around. Beve followed him, sparing a glance at the painting in the entryway – a gigantic  landscape of what looked like Stormwind before the industrial revolution.

The entry lead to the most spacious living room with open kitchen she had ever seen. The first thing that caught her eyes was the  floor to ceiling window running the whole length of the room though, and she got lost in the view for a moment, the lights of the city looking like stars from up there, and she could even see the dark sea, looking peaceful from this distance.

“Hello?” called a voice from behind, and she jumped, internally cursing herself from being too out of it to even hear someone approach.

“Ah, Anduin, sorry for bothering you, but this was an emergency,” said Bolvar, walking to the blond boy standing at the end of the dark hallway between the kitchen and the livingroom and hugging him briefly. “This is Beve,” he added, turning to her but keeping an arm around the teenager – he must have been seventeen at most, she realized now that she was looking at him. “Beve, this is Anduin.”

“Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to finally meet you too,” replied the boy, smiling.

Beve raised an eyebrow, making him laugh softly.

“You’re the woman living next to my father’s house, right? The one driving him crazy with your unkept garden.”

For a second, Beve refused to understand what was happening.

“You’re Wrynn’s son.”

“In the flesh.”

Beve turned her eyes to Bolvar.

“He’s gonna kill us both if anything happens to his son, you know that right?”

“Yes, that’s why we are leaving as soon as the sun rises, and no one needs to know that we were here.”

She had known that Wrynn had a son that he rarely saw. She hadn’t known his age, or that he was even in Stormwind, but she had heard him talk about him a few times, and the love had been clear as day.

If anything happened to his son, there was no question that everyone involved would die in a very violent manner.

“What if we don’t have until sunrise?” she asked, not knowing if it was paranoia or if her guts were really telling her something.

Both Bolvar and Anduin frowned, and the werewolf let go of the teen to take a step closer to her.

“Beve? Are you alright?”

She reached up when she realized something was running from her nose, unsurprised to find blood, and she just had time to look up at Bolvar and think to herself  _fuck I’m screwed_ , before she was collapsing on the floor, body agitated with convulsions.

Images started flashing in front of her eyes, one second she could see Bolvar running to her, the next second a destroyed tower, Bolvar kneeling next to her and saying something, Aliden looking down at her.

Magic was growing around her, she could feel the pressure of it as it overcharged her body and started bleeding out thickly. It hurt, and she could only close her eyes when she felt Bolvar and Aliden put a hand on her forehead at the same time.

“He’s coming,” whispered Aliden through the wool in her ears, and she gritted her teeth against the flash of pain that surged through her, wondering if the entire penthouse was shaking around her, of it was just the seizure. “Get up now!”

She tried, she really did,  but she just managed to open her eyes as the doors to the elevator were pushed open by no other than Otto.

He must have been following them, to be there only ten minutes after their arrival.

Bolvar immediately let go of her and jumped on Otto, and Beve closed her eyes, did her best not to scream, and managed to roll to her belly  and start crawling in the direction of the couch. Hopefully she’d be able to hide behind it and do what she had to.

Unfortunately for her, Anduin joined her hiding place all of a second later, a phone pressed to his ear as he sent a quick look over the back of the couch.

“Yeah, Bolvar is keeping him away for now,” he said into the phone, breathless, “Beve is having a seizure and it looks pretty bad. Her nose is bleeding a lot.”

“Get out of here!” yelled Varian’s voice on the other side of the line.

“I can’t leave her!” replied Anduin, and the next answer was lost on her because of a new wave of pain slicing right through her brain.

She tried to muffle her scream of agony, which probably didn’t work, and wrapped her fingers around Anduin’s arm. He must have read on her face what she was trying to do, because then he was holding the phone up to his ear with his shoulder, and grabbing her with both hands to help her in a sitting position – which was  _extremely_ difficult considering the fact that she was still convulsing.

He managed to have her leaning against the back of the couch and him, so she could stay upright.

“Beve,” said Aliden’s voice under the loud buzzing in her ears, and she tried really hard to open her eyes, but no matter what, everything was black, like it had been after she had first received the spell. “Beve, come on! Fight it! You’ve done worse.”

She tried to answer but almost choked on her tongue instead and only managed a weird “Nghl!” sound. Distantly she could hear the sounds of a fight, and Anduin’s panicked voice talking to his even more panicked father, but she tried to focus on Aliden’s as much as she could.

“That’s it,” he said, “you know what to do, you know it’s the only way.”

She grunted, fell back on her belly, and started crawling again..  Anduin tried to stop her, but she kicked his hand away, and did her best to keep moving.

Her body stopped convulsing at some point, but she barely realized it, the pain shooting through her brain down to the rest of her body making it hard to focus on anything.

“You can do this,” whispered Aliden.

She doubted it, but something flew above her head and violently crashed into the big windows. It didn’t crack, or at least didn’t make a sound when it did – she still couldn’t see anything and had to use her other senses to tell – but she was pretty sure it was Bolvar, which wasn’t good.

Someone grabbed her by the hair before she could move or realize what was happening, and she passed out for a second when she was pulled up to her feet. She came to the second her body hit something, and her sight came back as she fell to the ground like a disjointed puppet.

There was the sound of a body hitting another one, and Beve grabbed the thing she had been thrown against – a kitchen counter – and used it to push herself up to her feet.

_Marble counter_ said Darbel’s voice in her head, and she snorted  as she splattered blood all over it.

It was way too much blood for a simple nosebleed,  but she didn’t have time to worry about  it as she turned around, keeping her hands on the counter to stay upright, and saw Otto hold Bolvar up above his head before throwing him through the room in the direction of the elevator.

The sound that he made when he got in contact with the inside of the elevator told Beve that he wouldn’t get up in a little while.

Otto turned to face her, his eyes completely white, and she shivered in fear because if she had known…

Why hadn’t Aliden told her that Otto was completely mad?!

And more importantly, why hadn’t he killed him yet?

“Did Aliden send you?” she asked, voice too weak to be more than a whisper.

“Aliden is too weak to lace his own shoes,” replied Otto – and his voice was too hoarse.

“How long ago did you lose control?”

He licked his lips instead of replying, and threw himself at her.

Her head hit the counter as she fell, unable to breathe with Otto’s full weight falling on top of her, and she just had time to give him a weak punch in the side of the head before his hands were closing around her neck and squeezing as hard as he could.

Something snapped in her neck, she felt and heard it, and it was of course this moment her body chose to start convulsing again.

The pain made everything swim, and then everything stopped.

She was pretty sure she was dead, until she felt something cold and wet touch her cheekbone.  She  opened her eyes , looking up at the light gray sky, every rasping breath more difficult than the last.  She was laying on the snow, and blinked up as it slowly flew down from the sky, onto her.

Just like last time, she was dying on top of a mountain. The only difference was that she knew very well this mountain peak: it was the sacred one. The altar wasn’t far.  In fact, she was pretty sure she was laying in the exact spot where her father had stabbed her.

She heard a noise, but couldn’t turn her head when she tried to – Otto had broken her neck, _right_. All she could do was wait, and fortunately it didn’t take long before a large shadow fell over her.

The shadow was all black, but she could see a pair of very pale gray eyes. She knew those eyes.

They were hers, when she was in her other skin.

She parted her lips, trying to speak, but Otto must have also ruined her vocal cords because she couldn’t get a single sound out. Instead, she just laid there, watching as the feline shadow got more and more clear,  first its black nose, then the two big fangs sticking out of its mouth,  and then the white and black pattern of its fur.

Beve smiled up at the gigantic panther above her – but she guessed calling this part of her a panther was like calling a werewolf a wolf. They were much bigger and much more dangerous.

Still. This half of her had died the day she had, on this very mountain top. She didn’t understand how it was here, now, looking down at her, but it helped calm her.

_Here we are again_ , thought her feline form, and her smile grew.  _Always getting in trouble_ .

_We don’t know anything else_ , she thought back.

_It’s true, but don’t you think it’s too late for you to go?_

She wanted to shrug, but couldn’t move.  _I don’t exactly have a choice, I’m dying._

_Yes, but we’re not dead yet._

Beve frowned, wondered what it meant because she was pretty sure this side of her was dead – had disappeared the second she had been thrown out of Alterac, her ancestral home – but pain thundered through her before she could think, and she screamed as everything swam around her.

The next second, she was back in the kitchen with Otto squeezing her neck. Her nose was still bleeding, and she felt its iron-taste as she licked her lips. Magic was still building around her, but she couldn’t focus long enough to have it take form, so  she decided to try something else.

The animal part of her had said the weren’t dead yet, so she raised a hand, and put it around Otto’s neck too.

He snarled and laughed in her face, pulling her head up and slamming it hard against the floor,  everything going black around her, all sound disappearing to become a loud buzzing.

Still, her hand was around his neck, and she focused on that as he slammed her head again.  _Claws_ , she thought as hard as she could, feeling them grow.

They weren’t as sharp or long as when she was in her panther skin, but she decided it would have to do as Otto slammed her head against the marble floor a third time, and she planted her claws around his trachea, and dug them in as much as she could.

She couldn’t see or hear anything, but she could feel Otto choking and trying to move back and get away from her, but it was already too late. He slammed her head down one last time, and she used the movement to tear his trachea out of his throat.

Otto’s body fell on top of her, she felt his thick  and warm blood soaking her clothes, and as she tried to take a breath in, she realized that she couldn’t.

Well, there were worse ways to die,  she just wished it would happen sooner rather than later, because the pain in her body was only growing with each passing second, but she still wouldn’t pass out from it.

Being stabbed had hurt a lot less, but maybe it had been thanks to the cold. Right now she couldn’t tell if it was hot in the penthouse, or if it was only her feeling like this because of all the blood covering her and her body pumping adrenaline like crazy.

There was no way she wasn’t bleeding out from the head considering how hard Otto had slammed her, and she really wished the blood loss would make her numb.

She thought it finally happened when Otto’s weight disappeared, but then she also felt something pass between her open lips and fall to the back of her throat. She couldn’t swallow, not with the way her neck and throat had been squeezed, and felt something grab her hand.

She counted three slow heartbeats, before a miracle happened and she could finally take a breath in.

Instinctively she swallowed whatever had been slipped into her mouth, too out of it to think about how disgusting and random that was, and felt something stir in her chest. The thing in her hand squeezed her fingers, and she squeezed back, and a second  later , all the pain disappeared.

She could have cried from the relief,  until she realized that she already was when she heard something make shushing sounds against her ear. She tried moving her hand, found that she couldn’t, and turned her head instead, nose brushing against someone’s unshaved cheek.

“You’re gonna be okay,” was murmuring the man, his voice hoarse and too deep to be completely human. “I promise, you’re gonna be just fine, don’t worry.”

“Your son…” she whispered back, because of course it would be Varian Wrynn of all people to arrive as she was dying.

“Varian I’m losing her!” warned a strained voice – _Darbel_ , murmured her brain – and Beve blinked, wondering how and when the witch had arrived.

Before she could ask she felt all of her muscles tense, and started having seizure.

  
  


  
  


***

  
  


  
  


Beve had started her initiation at the age of five, like it was custom. She had spent hour upon hours up at the sacred altar, on the higher point of mount Alterac, training both physically and mentally with the elders.  The other children hadn’t understood it, had oftentimes rejected her, and she had taken it pretty badly. Only Elina hadn’t treated her any differently, and she had always been grateful for that.

Nice and soft-spoken Elina, who had died on the floor of her shitty house.

When she had turned  sixty she had met the first stranger that her father had allowed in Alterac. The man had introduced himself with only a grunt. He had been green skinned, with pierced pointy ears and big tusks starting on his lower jaw and pointing up at the sky.

The killings had started a few months later. It had been one person at a time for many years. Every few month someone would disappear, and they would find the body a lot later, half eaten, or defaced for dark rituals. Her father had tried to minimize it, saying that he was doing his best to stop it, but Beve wasn’t stupid – and more importantly, the Mountain spoke to her.

She had gotten out of Alterac a few times, it was part of her training, and she knew exactly what type of creatures existed outside of her home. She had only found the name for the green skinned one when she had turned  a hundred and  thirty seven. An orc. And she had only realized what type of magician could do what was done to her people.

A warlock.

Putting two and two together wasn’t that hard.

No, the hard part had been thinking up a plan to finally put a stop to it . Killing off the orcs – and there had been a lot more of them in Alterac that she had been lead to believe – had been relatively easy, but killing her father had been the real challenge.

She had managed, barely, and had paid dearly for it, but the ritual had been completed. Blood had spilled, the door had been closed, and something had been given in exchange – her life. She knew that despite the fact that Darbel had saved her life, the Mountain would still consider her life as given. She was out of Alterac now, and had no more powers to go back. She had been stripped of who she had been, to become a human.

The ritual had worked, and there were no reason for a door suddenly opening again, only to let out her brother Dimitris, and a bloodthirsty Otto.

Aliden had known about her plan to kill their father, and while he had disagreed with her, he had never betrayed or tried to stop her.

Why would he be starting this now?

_You need to look at the bigger picture Beve. You need to look away from him_ , murmured a voice in her dream, but she couldn’t understand what it meant.

  
  


  
  


***

  
  


  
  


She woke up with a start  and started fighting off the thing pressing down on her, until she realized that it was a weighted blanket.

The fight draining out of her in an instant , she sat up, and looked around.

Dark bedroom. A king sized bed, with the softest sheets she had ever felt. Someone had more than probably put her in a shower with all of her clothes still on, judging by the state of them, and the red shirt she had basically stolen from Wrynn was gone. She just sat there for a moment before realizing that the muffled voices she could hear were coming from the same apartment, and suddenly she remembered that she had been in a penthouse, with Bolvar and the Alpha’s son of all people.

By all means, she should have been dead, but it seemed like it wasn’t the case yet, so she slowly got up, nausea immediately hitting her,  and stumbled to the closest door.

It lead her to a pristine bathroom, all marble and glass, and as she looked through the floor to ceiling window at the sunrise on the horizon, she wondered how she had managed to stay alive so long with a broken neck and what had to have been a crushed throat.

She splashed water on her face when no answer came, and looked at the thin, pale and exhausted looking version of her in the mirror. Someone must have washed her hair, because it was still a little humid at the back and there was no trace of blood in it.

When she reached for the back of her head, her fingers felt nothing. Not a cut, not a bump, not a thing.

She gritted her teeth, and had a sudden flashback of her laying on the floor, convulsing in a puddle of blood while Darbel was chanting a spell above her and Wrynn held her down, repeating “What the fuck is wrong with her eyes?”

Well. That was going to be awkward.

She took a deep breath in, and slowly walked out of the bathroom, before doing the same with the other door in the bedroom and walking down the dark hallway she had first seen Anduin in.

Everyone stopped talking when she stepped into the living room, and she took a moment to simply look at them. Flynn, Bolvar, Wrynn and Darbel were all sitting on the gigantic couch, the television on but muted, all with steaming cups in hand or down on the coffee table.

The couch was blue, she realized, and she raised an eyebrow at Darbel, who only smirked.

“You look like shit,” she commented.

“Blue couch and marble counters didn’t help at all.”

“Are you sure?”

“Pretty certain,” she said, before sitting on the one armchair that was at the end of the couch, and also the closest surface where she could sit.

“Well, it helped me, because I knew where to go to stop that gushing wound on your head.”

The three werewolves tensed on the couch, but Darbel’s smirk only grew wider.

“Then there was also your neck.”

“That’s enough,” murmured Wrynn, a deep rumble that sounded like it came straight from his chest, and in a second Bolvar and Flynn were up and slowly disappearing down the hallway.

It was smarter not to run in front of a predator that would take it as you being a prey.

Darbel winked at Beve, before also gracefully getting up, and following the same path.

After a few seconds, the Alpha turned and looked directly into her eyes. “How do you feel?” he asked, as if he couldn’t tell the intensity of his gaze.

Thankfully, Beve wasn’t easily impressed. “I’m better than I should be,” she said, because it was the truth.

“Can you come and sit here? We need to talk.”

She  _really_ didn’t want to – there was something twisting in her stomach, for some reason, and she didn’t like it – but it wasn’t like she had a choice, so she slowly moved to the couch, still keeping a good meter between them.

He slid closer, until he could grab her chin and pull her closer, looking into her eyes.

“They were almost white, when we arrived. Bolvar said you hadn’t breathed in around five minutes, but still we managed to bring you back. Why?”

“Magic,” she replied, the truth, but a lot simplified.

He frowned, and didn’t let go of her.

“Magic wasn’t enough, at least not witchcraft. I had to step in,” he announced, looking down for a while as he pursed his lips.

He looked… weird. He wasn’t mad like usual, or happy or sad. No, it was more like… she discreetly breathed in deep, and the sharp smell told her everything she couldn’t guess from his face.

Shame.

Varian Wrynn was ashamed, and she couldn’t understand why.

“Beve,” he whispered after a moment, looking back up into his eyes, specks of gold in his panicked ones, “I had to give you some of my flesh to speed up the healing process.”

“Okay,” she said, slowly, not understanding why he was growing more agitated as the seconds passed.

“You squeezed my hand when I asked for your consent, so I took it as a yes.”

“Alright.”

He swallowed, and finally let go of her chin, just looking at her while having what seemed like a mild panic attack – and she was pretty sure she must have been missing something, because she  _didn’t understand what was going on_ .

“It shouldn’t have worked, but it did. It worked, and now you’re alive.”

She nodded slightly.

“I’m sorry, it was out of boundaries and I shouldn’t have done it, not when you were too out of it to consent to it. I… I don’t know what happened, I didn’t have time to think, and it’s not an excuse, there’s _no_ excuse for what I did, but I just hope you can understand that it would have never happened if the situation hadn’t been this dire.”

“What are you talking about?” she asked, and this time she was pretty sure the panic attack was on full speed because the unthinkable happened.

He got teary eyed.

It was Beve’s time to start panicking.

“Wrynn,” she said, voice shaking slightly, “what the fuck did you do?”

“You’re human so it should have absolutely no repercussion on you.”

“Tell me right now,” she ordered, gritting her teeth against the sudden wave of fear taking hold of her.

There was a roar, somewhere in the back of her mind, but she focused on the man in front of her, hoping that he was making a big deal out of nothing, but she also knew that he wasn’t the kind to panic, ever.

“I made you a member of the pack. It shouldn’t have worked with a human, but it did. I can feel the link between you and the pack.”

The roar grew deafening, and she was pretty sure she would have fallen had she not been sitting down.

“You did what?” she asked, mouth try, throat tight, stomach in a knot.

He started talking with agitation, tone raising in his panic, but she didn’t hear a word he said,  because she realized that the roar in her head wasn’t coming from her, and if she focused hard enough, she could feel it: a web of feelings and names and presences, right there in the back of her mind. She focused hard on one, could almost feel the glide of the razor on her cheek at Mathias shaved, and she suddenly jumped to her feet, snapping out of it.

Wrynn immediately stopped talking and got to his feet too, looking paler than she had ever seen him.

“Look, I apologize, I didn’t know what else to do and it _should not_ have worked. You’re just a witch, there’s no reason it would have stuck, and even though it did you shouldn’t be able to feel anything.”

“Stop talking,” she ordered, the panic suddenly drying and getting replaced by ice cold fury.

Yeah, this, she could manage.

She closed her hands into tight and shaky fists, focusing on the cold feeling rising in her throat so she wouldn’t start hyperventilating, and took a step back from him.

“Get out,” she gritted between her teeth, “of my way.”

“Beve,” he whispered, but she bared her teeth, immediately shutting him up.

“Don’t you fucking say my name,” she warned, feeling the fury getting hotter, and it was a bad sign. A _very_ bad one, because she suddenly remembered with crystal clarity what it had felt like to tear Otto’s throat out, and she wanted to do the same to him. “I’m leaving, and you’re not gonna follow me, you’re not gonna send any of your fucking wolf after me, and you’re not gonna contact me in any way,” she said, voice too calm, too cold.

He shook his head slowly, more teary than before, but only stood still and shaking as she rounded the coffee table, and walked as fast as she could to the elevator.

She hadn’t expected it to work, but it was already waiting for her with opened doors and didn’t have any problem going down to the lobby of the building.

She didn’t exactly have a plan in mind, but it didn’t matter, she only wanted to get as far from here as she could for now, and she didn’t hesitate running out as soon as she was on the sidewalk, not even thinking about the fact that her clothes were covered in dry blood and she looked like someone who had just survived a deadly car accident.

  
  


  
  


***

  
  


  
  


The mountains around Stormwind were full of hiking trails that Beve had walked up and down about a hundred times, and it wasn’t hard for her to find one of the less visited one, and just start walking, trying to empty her mind with each step.

She couldn’t believe it.

_Could. Not._

It must have been a joke, because she was pretty sure this was the absolute worst thing that could have happened to her. The  _worst_ . She would have rather died there on the kitchen marble under Otto. She would have rather eaten her own legs. She would have rather…

“Fuck,” she whispered, her entire body starting to shake as some panic slipped into her mind – but she knew it wasn’t hers.

She could feel it. It was  _his_ .

Fucking Alpha, deciding for her when she couldn’t say no or fight back. Fucking Alpha getting his nose into her business. No one had asked him to send people to follow her all the way to Booty Bay. No one had asked him to get involved.

Fuck.

She could have dealt with it herself. Bolvar hadn’t even been useful for more than five minutes. She had been the one to take care of Otto.  She had never needed anyone before, and wasn’t about to start now, especially not by getting a stupid pack of werewolves up in her business.

“Fuck,” she said, out loud this time, and tried very hard to cut off the feelings she could feel coming from Wrynn.

It worked, and the relief was enough to have her stop dead in her track and just sit down on the ground.

She needed to get going, she knew that, and as soon as possible. She needed to pack her things and get out of town. There was no way she was going back to living next to the pack, not after that.

Fuck, they had left about a dozen dead animals on a porch, and he had  _made her a member of the pack?_

He must have slammed his head against the floor too at some point, it was the only explanation that made some sort of sense.

_It shouldn’t have worked_ he had said, which didn’t explain why he had still tried. Fuck, she didn’t know why he had even cared.  She gritted her teeth as hard as she could, but that didn’t  stop the stupid tears of rage from spilling over and running down her cheeks.

She had the sudden urge to tear her clothes out and slip into her other skin, which hadn’t been possible even six hours ago, but she had used claws to kill Otto, and if she was now a part of Wrynn’s  _fucking_ pack then anything could be possible, right?

She didn’t have to talk herself into it more, just closing her eyes, and finding this familiar cold place in her chest. It was instant. It didn’t hurt. It was like going home after a long time to find her favorite homemade dish already on the table, waiting for her.

One second she had opposable thumbs, the next she was on four legs, tangled up in her ruined clothes  but feeling happier than she had in a long while, and it was enough for her to forget about what had happened.

She teared through her clothes, and roared up at the sky.  She wasn’t a panther, not exactly, but for now she could pretend to be just that as she started running down the hiking path.

  
  


  
  


***

  
  


  
  


Dimitris found her three weeks later. She had started the long walk North, staying in the mountains as much as she could, knowing that he would find her somehow. The seizures hadn’t stopped happening, but it was easier to manage like this than it had been as a human, and she would have been naked if she had turned back anyway.

Her brother didn’t say anything when he found her. He simply smiled proudly, before leading her down to the closest parking lot and opening the back door of a dark blue car for her.

She laid in the backseat, taking up all the space, and closed her eyes as he started the car.

She dreamed of laying on some kind of leathery backseat, having someone kneeling above her and cradling her head as she was agitated with convulsions, and woke up with a start when someone honked at them and Dimitris swore loudly.

He sent her a look through the rear-view mirror, before focusing back on the road.

“We can’t go back to Alterac,” he announced, “at least not the way we both came out, but I’m pretty sure you can open a door.”

She grunted as best as she could.

“I know, I know, but Aliden can’t, so it’s logical that you should be the one able to. After all, look at you. You should have died when I threw the spell at you.”

_I will soon_ , she thought.

The seizures were easier to handle like this, but they were getting worse, she couldn’t lie to herself about this, and she had had a lot of time to think about the cause and solution to this whole thing.

Magic didn’t do things by half. It was either all in, or all out, and for most of her life Beve had been all-in – and then she had lost her abilities and had become all-out.

Now, she was in the middle, with some magic but not all of it, with one foot here, and one foot in Alterac.

Something had to be done, a choice had to be made, and she had no idea what to do.

Dimitris started humming along to the song playing on the radio, and she decided that it could wait another day, so she closed her eyes and went back to sleep.

  
  


  
  


***

  
  


  
  


“We’ll try again in an hour, okay?” whispered Dimitris as he passed her an icy bottle of water with the cap off, and brushed her hair off her sweaty forehead.

She gulped half of the bottle’s content without breathing, before accepting the tissue he was handing her and tapping at the blood pouring from her nose.

“It’s been a week non-stop, Dimitris. If I could do it, I would have already managed.”

“I’m not ready to abandon and let you die, Beve, and time is of the essence, so we’ll try again in an hour.”

She glared at him. The seizures had gotten worst than absolutely horrifying, and every time she tried to use her magic to open a door to Alterac, one started. Her nose was almost perpetually bleeding, and she hadn’t been able to keep food down since she had turned back into a human.

She was dying, they both knew it, and there was nothing they could do about it.

“I’m the one who did this to you, I’m not about to let you down,” he had confessed one night – time was blurry at best for her now – and she had seen the truth in his eyes. He would stay by her side until she died, and would feel guilty for it until it was his time too.

She didn’t want that – and didn’t want to die either – but her best efforts were getting more and more weak and pathetic as time went on, and she couldn’t think of a solution.  Darbel had been unable to give her any advice, apologizing in a small voice when telling her that she didn’t have any visions, hadn’t foretold what had happened when she had left the penthouse without a backward look.

Dimitris had found some sort of shaman somewhere, but the man hadn’t been of any help either, and they couldn’t get in contact with an elder.

They were stuck here, and Beve knew deep down that sooner or later, what was happening to her would be happening to Dimitris too.

She had told him about what Wrynn had done, and she knew there was a lot that he had wanted to say at the time and hadn’t, by respect for her, but as the days went by and her situation took a turn for the worse, she knew that he would bring it up.

After all, it was the only option they hadn’t tried. If she had been able to be linked like that to an entire pack of werewolves, surely they could help her, maybe. Possibly.

She wasn’t desperate enough though. Not yet.

“Help me up,” she said, “I wanna try to eat the crackers again.”

Her brother looked like he already knew what was going to happen and like it was gutting him to watch it, but he still did as he was told.

  
  


  
  


***

  
  


  
  


Here was the thing. Dimitris, after finding her, had taken her to a small furnished apartment that he was renting in Redridge, right outside of Lakeshire. The  place was neither bad nor good, but it was out of the way and no one batted an eyelash when they made weird noises during their rituals.

It had been a good day, so far. They had eaten breakfast together, and gotten out for a run around the mountains surrounding the place, and had cooked lunch together.

That was when Beve had started convulsing, except that this time even she could feel the magic coming off of her in thick waves, making it hard for Dimitris to stay in her presence and help her, and it had lasted for hours and hours. She understood his reaction – he was scared shitless for her and had panicked. That didn’t mean she was happy about it.

She was still on the floor convulsing when the sun had started to set and someone started pounding on the front door of the apartment. She was semi conscious, just enough to be aware of her surrounding and know that this was it, this was the point where she either died or her brain got so fried that it would be the same result, and so she could tell that it was Varian Wrynn who walked in and knelt next to her, bringing her head on his knees and pushing her hair away.

“How long?” he asked, a soft whisper, his eyes trailed on hers.

“It’s been over six hours,” replied Dimitris, sitting down next to him. “You’re an Alpha, and you put her in your pack. There has to be something you can do.”

“I don’t even know what is causing all of this,” he replied, his hand still running in her hair.

“Dim,” she whispered, trying to tell her brother that she didn’t want this – refused to accept more of his help, even if it meant dying like this, with her entire body in agonizing pain while she drooled over the carpet.

“We’re not letting you die, Beve,” he said, his tone leaving no place for disagreement.

“You need to open up to me,” said Varian after a minute of simply looking down into her eyes, his left hand never stopping its slow movement into her hair.

Beve closed her eyes, refusing to give in.  It wasn’t that she was stubborn to the point of letting herself die, but she was pretty sure nothing would work, and she’d rather live her last moments without a bunch of werewolves in her head.

Something stirred in her chest though, something that was deeply hidden, and soft, and vulnerable. She tried to resist the stirring, to keep this thing hidden, but it was coming to the surface whether she liked it or not, and she was too weak to fight for too long.

She let it take her, and found herself drifting off for a while.

When she opened her eyes, she was laying on the snow for the third time in her life, always on the same spot. The only difference was that there was a big white wolf breathing into her hair this time, and when she looked at it, it had golden eyes that she had seen before.

Actually, she realized as she sat up and came face to face with it, wolf was a loose term here. This one was way taller, and its paws looked more like a tiger’s than a wolf’s.

It tilted its head to the right – or  _he_ she guessed – before licking her from the collarbone, up to the temple, making her lean back in disgust.

“What the fuck!” she said, unable to stop a smile when the wolf’s only answer was to tilt its head to the other side.

Wind picked up, and in a second the wolf had its back to her and was growling lowly at something that was hidden to her by its body. She had an idea of what it could be though, so she gently grabbed a fistful of fur on Varian’s side, and gently pushed him one step to the side, so she could see.

Just like she had thought, the gigantic white panther was here, looking at Varian and her with its familiar white eyes.

It soothed something deep inside of her when she met her own eyes, and she shushed the wolf next to her.

“It’s okay,” she said, “look at her eyes.”

She knew the moment he realized, because he suddenly relaxed under her hand, stopped growling and actually sat down. The panther, apparently satisfied, walked to them, and the two animals – if really they could be called that – sniffed at each other’s nose for a moment.

Her panther decided that she was satisfied when she rubbed the side of her head and neck against Varian’s, before turning her focus on Beve, who was still sitting on the ground, watching them.

She meowed, the sound high and piercing, before walking over to Beve, who gripped Varian’s fur tighter in her hand and closed her eyes, bracing for something that she didn’t understand – and magic sliced through her, pulsing into her scar, but not hurting like it had before. It felt cold, in a soothing way this time.

Beve only opened her eyes again when she heard a loud howl, and once he was done Varian bumped his nose against her sternum, and it was only then that she realized she was purring.

She blinked down at the wolf looking at her with mirth, and started laughing.

  
  


  
  


***

  
  


  
  


She wasn’t purring, but she wasn’t convulsing either, when she opened her eyes to Varian Wrynn and Dimitris, and she didn’t even have to think before she was sitting up, closing her eyes, and holding her right hand out.

There was a rush of magic, from her heart and out around her, and for the first time in ten years, she felt it take the shape she wished. It was the easiest thing in the world to find her connection to Alterac, and from there to find the door that had opened and  _oh,_ she could see why things had gotten so bad. She closed it, making sure it would stay this way, and from the sharp inhale she heard from Dimitris, she knew that she had done it correctly.

She opened her eyes, and turned to look at her brother and her neighbor, who were both staring at her.

“I’ll survive,” she announced, smiling when Dimitris took her in his arms while laughing loudly in joy.

She met Varian’s eyes over his shoulder, and couldn’t read the expression on his face.

He just sat there, looking at her with dark eyes. She wanted to go crawl into his arms, for some reason, so she did, telling herself that she could blame it on the emotions of not dying anymore, if anyone asked her.

He closed his arms around her, pressing his face against her shoulder, and they didn’t move for a while. Beve could feel that her nose was still bleeding and she was ruining his t-shirt – another tight gray one – but he didn’t seem to care, and she was too tired to do anything about it.

Her panther had marked him with her scent, and it clung to him even here, in the living room of Dimitris’ apartment, which settled something in her guts – the primal part of her, the one that wanted to purr again, just because she could and was satisfied.

She heard her brother move, but got more comfortable on Varian’s lap instead. She was hungry, and exhausted, and her entire body hurt, but for now she didn’t want to move, and he seemed okay with the program.

  
  


  
  


***

  
  


  
  


The  waiter sent them a slightly scared look as he put down the gigantic plate of tacos to share in the middle of the table, his eyes going from Beve to Varian as he tried to assess whether it was a joke or not, before he had to move away to let his colleague pass to get them their drinks.

Beve had ordered a gigantic soda, along with the biggest sized coffee they had, with extra shots in it, and she drowned about half of it the second it was  put down on the table. Varian had already started on the plate of tacos, and she followed his lead.

For a long time, they ate without saying anything, until she finally took a breather from shoving food in her mouth to just sip at her soda.

“I’m sorry for bringing you into the pack without your consent.”

She looked up at him, not having expected him to speak, especially not to say _that_.

“It saved me, didn’t it?” He nodded slowly, so she shrugged a shoulder. “I was mad, still am, actually, but I’m not stupid. And I also want to thank you.”

He looked away at that, but nodded.

“There’s something else you should know…”

That had her put the soda down and cross her arms on her chest.

“I did something, about six years ago, to protect your from the pack. It was a very bad time then, I lost my second, and a few wolves tried to kill me to take control of the pack, so letting a witch live so close to all of us was a huge no for most of them, so I declared you my mate.”

For a second, she couldn’t breathe anymore.

“I didn’t… I didn’t expect anything from it, alright? Calling you my mate and mating you properly are not the same thing, and like for you being in the pack, the fact that you are human should mean that it doesn’t have any repercussion on you. I should be the only one feeling the consequences of my poor judgment,” he said, wetting his lips and looking straight into her eyes. “But I’m beginning to think that there’s something very strange going on when it comes to you and pack magic.”

Now would have been the perfect time to tell him that she wasn’t a witch and that the panther he had seen wasn’t her totem animal or anything like it, that it had been  _her_ but in her other form,  that she was closer to him than he had thought, that there might have been a  _really_ good reason for all this werewolf magic to work on her.

She was too shocked to do any of that though, and she just sat there, waiting.

“Here’s the thing,” he said, putting his elbows on the table, and looking down at the plate between them, “when I declared you my mate, it opened up a space in the pack, a space that stayed empty for six years and put a huge strain on the pack as a whole. It birthed a lot of resentment from my werewolves, because they couldn’t understand why I would hold that space for you, when it was clear you would never fill it. That is why you had all those stupid dead animals at your door. That is why my wolves are so…” He seemed to look for a word, and only smiled when she suggested big assholes. “They don’t understand my reasons, and most of them have no idea that you don’t know what I did.”

For a second, as she looked away from his face to look at his hands just as he was looking up at her, she switched places with him and could suddenly see  _herself_ , pale and thin but looking a lot more alive than before, on the red vinyl booth of the restaurant, with her big soda near her elbow.

She blinked, and was back in her own head instead of his, and she knew exactly what he was going to say next, because she wasn’t stupid.

Her people got mated too.

“I finally stepped up to that space earlier,” she said when he didn’t move.

He nodded, bit down on his lower lip, and looked up at her with a haunted expression on his face.

His hair was down for once that day, falling down over his shoulders and chest in thick and beautiful black stands, receiving jealous looks from the woman sitting at the bar eating breakfast. He had managed to clean up the blood she had put all over his shoulder, and although there were small circles under his eyes, he looked as fresh and well as usual.

Werewolves didn’t age, she had realized after some time. In the  six years she had known him, he hadn’t gained a single wrinkle. In fact, his skin was perfectly smooth, except for the two scars, one going down the side of his face through the left eyes, the other going across, over the bridge of his nose and connecting to the first scar on his cheekbone.

She hadn’t aged either, and she was pretty sure she was way older than him, but she didn’t profit from the same ability as him to look fresh as a peach at all times. She had almost died, and looked just like it. The only saving grace was that she had managed to comb her hair before leaving Dimitris’ place, and Varian had given her another big shirt – this time dark green – to wear over her t-shirt that had been completely ruined from her bleeding all over it.

He was her mate now, she realized as their eyes met. It explained some things, actually. Why he had never killed her all these years every time she had given him an order, why his werewolves, no matter how much they wanted it, never attacked her, why despite the palpable animosity between them he had always taken the time to bring her food, to lurk around when she’d had a very brutal shift at the hospital, to be there when she needed someone to yell at.

Fuck, they were mated.

“Look, we can try to undo this, okay. I never wanted to put you in this kind of situation, and whatever you want to do, I will respect your decision. I will understand if you want to move, or if you need me to back off and disappear for a moment. Those past few months have been a lot, so whatever you say, I will do.”

He looked so sincere, so absolutely sorry. She could see, when he suggested that they undid this, that it would gut him, that he didn’t even know if this was possible or if this would harm him, but that he would still try if that was what she wanted, and no matter what Beve wasn’t a monster. They had never been friends, but she couldn’t lie to herself. He had been in her life for  six years, had done  _the absolute most_ to keep her alive  recently , and she really didn’t want anything bad to happen to him.

Which was why, when she opened her mouth to reply, the only thing she said was “Let’s order some pancakes.”

He looked confused for a beat. “What?”

“I want pancakes.”

“Okay…”

“And more coffee.”

He kept his eyes turned to her, brows furrowed, as he beckoned a waiter closer and gave him the order.

“Anything else you want to say?” he asked after the waiter had disappeared into the kitchen, looking scared at how much they were planning on eating.

“Yeah, I guess I lost my job at the hospital when I didn’t show up for two months.”

Varian actually smiled at that, and his shoulders finally relaxed. “I called them to say you had a huge family emergency. You won’t get paid, but you should be able to go back to work when you decide to.”

“Thank you,” she said, reaching over the table just for a second, to squeeze his hand in hers, “for everything you’ve done.”

He looked down instead of replying, but she could see the soft blush spreading on his cheeks.

  
  


  
  


***

  
  


  
  


Varian drove them to his ridiculous mansion, and she said nothing because the idea of sleeping in the same room as the one Elina had died in was making her sick, so she followed him when he walked her to a guest bedroom on the second floor, and simply nodded when he showed her where the towels and clothes were in the huge wardrobe, and how to use the shower in the attached bathroom.

He left with one last long look, and closed the bedroom door behind him. Beve waited until she heard him walk into another room at the end of the hallway – probably the master bedroom – before falling back on the bed, and immediately falling asleep.

She woke up a few times, mostly to go pee and drink from the bathroom sink, and she thought she could hear someone walk in to check in on her a few times, but she mostly fell into a deep and dreamless sleep that lasted so long, that when she finally woke up for good she had no idea where she was, or how she had gotten there.

After a few minutes of just listening to the sound of people talking and cooking coming from downstairs, she finally remembered what had happened, and got up to take a shower.

She stood under the hot water for a  _very_ long time, letting her sore muscles relax. Even her fingers hurt, and for once she wished she was an actual witch, just so she could cast a spell to make herself feel better.

The water never ran cold, but she stayed in the shower long enough to feel like she was doing too much, so she forced herself to step out, dried herself with a fluffy white towel, and grabbed some clothes from the wardrobe.

She had no idea why there were jeans and t-shirts her size in there, but she wasn’t about to complain as she stepped outside of the bedroom, feeling much better than she had ever since this whole thing with Otto had started, and she slowly went down the stairs, letting her nose and ears guide her to the kitchen.

The room was facing the gardens and its view of the canals, and as the sun shined through the big french doors, into the open kitchen made out of neutral  stones and modern looking appliances, she realized how far from her world the Alpha lived.

There were three people sitting around the breakfast  nook , who looked at her curiously.

“Hello there,” smiled Bolvar, inviting her to sit next to him with a small hand gesture.

She simply nodded – and smiled at Anduin – and went to sit, watching as the human got up and started getting more coffee.

“You must be the infamous Beve,” said the last person around the table, a blonde and petite woman-slash-werewolf who must have been the most beautiful person she had ever seen. “I’m Valeera.”

Beve didn’t say anything, because she really didn’t know what to say. She accepted the coffee cup Anduin put down in front of her before sitting back down, and thankfully  they all immediately  went back to the conversation they had held before she had walked in.

“So then, why not stay here?” asked the teenager, looking at Bolvar with big eyes, which made Valeera roll hers.

“Come on Anduin, you know why. My house and my job are in Goldshire, I can’t just abandon everything and come here.”

“Your _home_ is here though! And I’ll be spending a lot more time here this year, come on.”

He made puppy eyes at Bolvar, and while Beve had no idea what they were talking about, she couldn’t help a chuckle when she saw the werewolf fall for it.

“I’ll think about it,” he grumbled, looking down at his coffee while reddening, “now stop looking at me like that, punk.”

Anduin clapped in his hands, happy, and turned to Beve.

“I’m trying to have him move back to Stormwind. He used to live here with us before, you know? It was great!”

But then he had been thrown out of the pack. She wondered if the fact that he had helped her escape Varian’s surveillance was working in his favor or against him.

“I don’t remember if I thanked you for helping me,” she said, turning to him.

Bolvar simply smiled. “Considering what happened, I’m not sure thanks are in order. You did it all on your own.”

“I heard it was pretty badass,” added Valeera, leaning in her direction with a secretive smile. “I saw the guy’s body, it was nicely done.”

“He deserved it,” she replied, and the other woman nodded.

“Let’s not talk about dead people at breakfast,” said Varian as he walked into the kitchen and went to sit right next to Beve.

The only reason she didn’t jump was because she had heard him walk down the stairs and in this direction, but it still surprised her and made her feel weirdly hot under the collar that he was close enough that she could feel the warmth coming off of his side.

“Where are the donuts?” he asked, stealing Beve’s untouched coffee like it was the most natural thing in the world.

She bit her tongue, trying to keep a straight face not show how out of place she felt.

“Flynn insisted on going with Mathias to buy them, and you know how the two of them get when they’re supposed to do a simple task together,” replied Valeera with a dismissing hand-gesture. “What about you, what were you up to?”

Varian spared a heartbeat long side look at Beve, smiling behind the coffee cup, before answering Valeera by starting to talk about work.

Beve had no idea what day it was, but it felt weird, how normal and natural it was for her to sit at the breakfast table with them, pretending she couldn’t feel every single millimeter of body part that would come into contact with Varian, but she guessed those people were her pack now, so she’d have to get used to them.

She met Varian’s eyes as everyone welcomed Mathias, Flynn and the giant box of donuts they were bringing with them, ten minutes later, and had to admit to herself that it could have been worse.

Her mate  gave her a private  smile  as he was forced to sit closer to her to make space for Mathias on the bench,  his thigh touching hers as he handed her cup of coffee back so she could take a sip too.

_Yeah, a lot worse._

**Author's Note:**

> definitely to be continued in a part 2


End file.
